we had a dinner party last night.
shutter sisters is looking for beauty on your kitchen counter.
although it was late, we still did the dishes,
i left my crystal to dry on a tea towel.
in keeping with the challenge of finding beauty on my kitchen counter.
early friday night, empty chairs
Margie's post yesterday sent me to three different stores trying to buy the September issue of Vogue. September comes out in August and I was hard pressed to find a copy. I am at page 369, still wallowing in the delicious ads seeing this and that, things that I wish I had or worse, that I wish I could wear. Or worse than worse, coveting the body that would carry those clothes just like the pictures. Everything is so polished, so perfect.
We want that, don't we? The nice things, the beautiful images, you understand, don't you? We see and want the things we think we deserve, but real life does not match the magazine fantasy. We don't always treat ourselves right, we don't make the small changes that could give us the same good feeling that looking at the pretty advertisement does.
Almost every day, I make a lunch and pack it in a bag and lug it to work, not because I'm particularly fiscally responsible or health conscious, but simply, my homemade lunches are better than the proffered fare at nearby restaurants. A few months ago, like a robot, I walked to the fridge, retrieved my lunch, snapped the lid off the container, went to take a bite and out of the blue, I had a split second of mindfulness and saw that eating out of plastic containers with a plastic fork was gross, it wasn't special. Day after day, lunch after lunch, I was eating in a temporary, throw away kind of way. I looked into my plastic bowl of salad and saw the correlation between me and how I was presenting my lunch to myself.
I have beautiful dishes at home, I set the scene for breakfast and dinner. What had happened to lunch? I had just never noticed that lunch should be as important a meal as our dinner in terms of presentation. Eating in the office, around the breakroom table was not terribly inspiring. Here I was, eating a gorgeous salad which I had prepared with care out of a worn, plastic container. Things hadn't taken a downward slide, this was my normal. I had never bothered to consider that I could be different, that my lunch was important and that no matter what I'm doing I deserve, if not the best, at least better than the worst.
That weekend, I bought myself this
the september vogue, all 798 pages of it, pledges an issue of value conscious chic, when to spend, when to save. i bought my issue several weeks ago and tucked it away, patiently waiting for cottage time to treat myself, in front of the wood stove, on the couch, with a glass of wine, and the time to look at every single page. carefully. oh my. i love me a september vogue.
the first ad that grabs me, clinique, in white. a gorgeous ad, clinique grown up. ding dong, clinique calling for the baby boomers. genius. the very next page, chanel, my own dear love, with a vintage fan. i want a vintage fan!! i am so en vogue.
my dear shudder sisters, the september issue is a plethora of amazing photography. personal, intimate photos, a true team effort of advertising genius, creative directors, editors, fashion designers, models, hair and make up people and photographers. there is a nordstrum multi page series that is fabulous. tiffany has a peace symbol pendant studded with diamonds for the flower child hidden inside every baby boomer. ahem, we are sporting a peace symbol magnet right above charley's name.
oh my, target is flogging peace symbol charm bracelets by dean harris (?), tiffany watch your back.
whoa, is that lauren hutton in a lord & taylor ad? yessiree ... and it's not even the age issue of vogue! everybody out there is sleeping with the baby boomers. oh hello jane fonda, you're here too!! good heavens banana republic are you really 30 years old? just like my daughter?
the piece de resistance, on page 622 we are introduced to clinique medical, oy vevoy, this procedure formula is available only at your doctors. hat's off clinique, you were reliable and worked when i was young and now, like a blessed prescription, available only from my doctor. way to go people. oh look, the cover of men's vogue, billionaire winos. haha. we are dimestore winos but whatever.
and there it is, right there on page 595! proof that i am so en vogue and in vogue, an article titled margiela be mine. ah, vogue you shouldn't have. i would have read you anyway.
i have to go, my vogue is calling me. best overall ad in my opinion, get chucked, the converse spread. and cher, i have no doubt you are on the cover of the october issue, you know the "do you believe in love" issue.
BB and I rarely have the same day off. I sit at my desk, in my cubicle, nine to five, Monday to Friday. (Sounds dire, doesn't it? It's really not.) BB works 6 days a week, evenings or afternoons. The theatre goes "dark" on Mondays and that is when he gets to come out into the light.
It's a special treat when we share the day off. We look forward to simply being together without a schedule. Today, there are a few chores to be done, the dishwasher needs to be emptied, the sheets have to go out on the line, the recycling has to go to the garage and a picnic must be packed.
Wait. A picnic? That's not a chore is it?
When we don't have a plan but know we want to go Somewhere, Anywhere, we pack the car with a picnic, the camera, shoes (because I never know if I'll need heels, running shoes or rubber boots) and we just go.
BB is the adventurer in our partnership, he's a curious guy (hehe you can read that two ways, can't you?). He'll turn down a road and I will ask where we are going. He won't know, he just wants to see where that road leads. It will be a beckoning he tells me. His beckonings have led us down lots of roads, we've found treasures for our home, seen things we never expected to see and always have a story to tell when we get back home.
It's a long weekend and I think we all love those.
What are you doing? Spending the last weekend at the cottage before the kids go back to school? Some urban hiking in your home town or someone else's home town? A fall fair? Hanging by the pool? It seems the possibilities are endless.
If you can find a ribfest near you, you should go. We went to a tiny one, I'm sure some of our friends south of the border who really know how to do barbecue would point and laugh and tell us silly Canadians that we have no idea how to do it right.
There was a dancing, hotdogging, bbq man who was cooking ribs not hotdogs.
I live in a very small town, in the middle of vineyards and orchards. I work in a medium sized city about a 25 minute drive from home.
I travel like this, first on a concession, then a two lane highway, onto a divided highway, up onto a freeway, down a ramp, onto city streets and arrive downtown. That's my drive to work.
The drive home from work is the better drive because although I travel the same roads, I go from downtown to the country and by the time I hit that two lane highway, my work day has faded completely from my consciousness.
I often hit red lights though.
As I sat at the red light this morning at the bottom of the ramp, I looked up at the freeway. This what I saw.
Last night, I was coming home later than usual and a very different kind of red light stopped me. I pulled over, used the car as a tripod and took this so you could see it too.
Morning and Night
I much prefer coming home, don't you?
Happy weekend.
Kath
BB and I have one car. This summer we decided to drive less. It wasn't just about the price of gas, we realized that we weren't being conscious or conscientious about driving. Hop in the car to go here, hop in the car to go there. We've cut back and I'm surprised at how easy it has been to simply decide that the car would remain parked whenever possible and then do it. BB rides his bike to work. I walk to the store. We rarely take an unnecessary trip "into town" on the weekends, if it can wait until I'm there for work, it waits.
Last night it looked like we were going to have a beautiful evening. We were planning to barbecue and eat outside. As has so often happened this summer though, the weather turned on us. The wind came up, the sky darkened and a terrific rain storm blew in. It rained hard, the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed. Yet, within a couple of hours it was all over, the setting sun was peering through the clouds and there was the prettiest of rainbows.
This has been the rainiest summer EVER in our area. Yesterday's storm broke the record. Sad, isn't it? Global warming and severe weather have not been "scientifically linked" but I'm seeing it outside my window.
50 cm (20 inches) of snow in a single day this past March.
My ditch filling in an hour when it normally drains quickly during a rainfall.
Hail pounding on my patio.
The sun coming out as quickly as it went away.
We want to do the right thing. We want to stop stepping so heavily on this earth. We already recycle and compost and pride ourselves on how little garbage we produce. We try to buy under-packaged products and we use our cloth shopping bags.
The next step was deciding to eliminate unfriendly cleaning supplies and soaps from our home. My biggest hurdle was thinking I had to change everything at once. For some reason I had it in my head that I would have to throw all the bad things away and start fresh in order to be truly "green". I couldn't afford to do that.
At the beginning of summer, I had a bright idea, why not just ensure that everything I bought from that point on was environmentally friendly. The next time I purchased laundry soap, I found a phosphate free brand. When the daily shower cleaner ran out, I bought the one from Method. I just discovered the Clorox greenworks products last week. I'm almost there. The dishwasher soap and bleach are the only two things left to switch over and I've already found the products I'm switching to. I feel really good about making these changes albeit slowly.
Are you changing your ways? Do you have any ideas to share?
Kath
I have had a rose garden since our second summer in this house. There were roses spread throughout the garden beds, BB emptied an existing oval perennial bed and moved all the roses into that one spot for me. The past three summers I have planted vegetables in a nice size bed behind the garage. Then I realized that it was hard work being a farmer. And really, I didn't want to be a farmer. That's why there is a farmer's market!
This year, BB (who was, I think, somewhat horrified by the dreadful overgrown state of my vegetable garden each summer when I would give up) suggested that I plant a cutting garden instead. It made terrific sense. Vegetables at the market are inexpensive, cut flowers can be pricey and I love having flowers in the house.
Now, on Friday nights I come home from work,
get a glass of wine and I fill my house with flowers.
this is the advertising slogan used for the condo a. and i have bought. it's two years down the road, a shovel just went in the ground this week and i can't wait. this is the view from our rooftop terrace, ten stories up. the lake, on one side, the lattes in little italy on the other, and the life, inside 1400 square feet of bliss.
