Second Hand, Second Thoughts

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

2011-08-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

"No one needs $800 shoes." This is my sister again--the one who collects Barbies. Her husband collects G.I. Joes, of course.
She is wrong. And not just because she's my bossy older sister and not just because I can be a passive-aggressive, pretentious little poop.

Apostolic WalkFit

     Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle (or a $55 Hermes hoofpick--seriously, even I draw the line at grubbing horseshit out of a hoof with a metal hooky-thing that costs more than 12 bucks max--unless the hoof belongs to the golden-footed Pegasus himself and the horseshit in question is ambrosial manure of the gods and the pick is made of platinum and I can wear it on a silver chain at Ascot while seated next to Prince Andrew.) (But if I found one at the Goodwill for $5.99, I'd say it was overpriced, but I wouldn't say no.)
   But I'm glad to know there are people who, while they may not need the outrageous shoes, want them and have the disposable income to buy them. I'm glad to know that there are people out there keeping those arts alive--beautiful shoes, and beautifully made clothes (insanely made cars and saddles that can trace their heritage back to Louis XIV). And not only to support the neurotic and sadistic artists who design them for starved, androgynous models to strut down a run-way, but for the artisans--the old French men in the fur shops and the Finnish miminalists who weave the fantastic textiles, the 5th generation Italian guys who tan leather as supple as fairyskins and the old Belgian women who still know how to tat lace as fine as spiderwebs.
     I recently read in Esquire magazine how actress Helen Mirren likes to buy her clothes from the thrift store. I suppose perhaps she thinks this makes her seem down to earth and unaffected by her fame and fortune.
   Actually, it really pisses me off.
   Making the kind of money she does after playing The Queen, it's her DUTY to shop for shoes and buy a heap of gorgeous clothes she can't possibly wear more than once. Or employing a personal stylist to do it. We support her art by plunking down $10.50 to see her do a poker-faced impression of a stolid British monarch (even Queen Elizabeth promoted the careers of venerable British couturiers Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell) for an hour and a half, she could at least support an equally temporal and considerably more wearable art by buying Vivienne Westwood frocks and if she's into feeling superior and being down to earth, she could scuff smugly around in a truckload of vegan Stella McCartney ballet flats. Or even just the entire new line from J. Crew. Because if I have to wrestle Helen Mirren in Options Thrift Boutique for a pair of Christian LaBoutin heels, well crap!
     Someone, after all, has to be out there paying retail prices and buying into the evil Madison Avenue conspiracies to make us feel bad about our bodies so that we buy to assuage our flagging self esteem; someone has to believe that their self worth is tied to material possessions and then, realizing it isn't, chuck it out for a tax write off. I don't mind being someone's tax write-offs--really. Or maybe--just maybe--they just think all those dresses and shoes and purses are really, really pretty, or cool, or fun.
     Fuck the current sanctimonious attitude about the materialistic culture!
   You go girls! Keep doing your part for the economy!
     Because I'm also very glad to know that there are people out there that want the outrageously priced shoes and can afford them and wear them once and then have so many pairs of shoes that they can freely donate a carload of them to Goodwill without batting an eye. I'll be there on Tuesday and Thursdays--after 11:30. Saturdays after 1 P.M. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays anytime after 9. That's called trickle down economics.

eBay--The End of Rarity?

2011-08-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

My sister the antiques dealer says that eBay has killed the quaint little antique store.

"Nothing's rare anymore," she laments. "People just type in what they want, they find it, they buy it."
     Isn't that a good thing?
     Wouldn't it be a good thing to have a choice about having to lurk around in your leaky building in a blighted neighborhood waiting for that one twisted soul who collects Precious Moments Santa Claus/John Deere figurines to stagger in and find yours that you squirreled away between the Holly Hobbie 1978 Christmas ornaments and the Playmobil nativity set? Oh, certainly, you can stay in your cluttered curiosity shop, if you wish--re-stacking your vintage Playboy magazines and dusting your lead-based glazed Fiesta Ware, if you must, but wouldn't it be better to make a sale? After all, with the knowledge that the unopened six pack of Billy Beer might go to an avid can collector in Plano, IL, a dithering customer might think twice about leaving your store without buying.
   Admittedly, I'm not a collector, per se. I don't quite understand the drive to collect all the Madame Alexander Happy Meal dolls or get the complete, limited edition Star Wars figurines. I'm quite happy to see what I can do with stuff that just happens to cross my path (literally--some of my best furnishings are curb finds). Though I've been able to find a replacement bean pot for my old Chambers Stove on eBay and Merimekko fabric at cut rates. So, maybe I'm not eligible to argue. But I'll do it anyway. It's what I'm known for.

     Take yesterday's top Goodwill find:

Classic vintage all-wool pleated Burberrys skirt. Made in England. I can't resist a beautifully made, plaid skirt and the label was an added bonus.
     Someone bought this skirt on their fall break during their junior year study abroad program in England in 1984. With a red Benetton sweater and a pair of slouchy boots--she probably felt she rocked the Sloane Ranger look. (Though there was no 1980's slang equivalent for the verb "rocked;" maybe she thought she looked "totally killer," or "awesome," or "totally excellent.")
     But then, after a disappointing, whirlwind hook-up with a British public school bad boy, she just let it hang in her closet her entire senior year. The skirt; not the memories (his name was Rupert and he was a poet!). It came with her when she got married and moved to Florida. She thought she might wear it when she went back north for the holidays. It's just that when you actually do go back north for the holidays, it's usually so freakin' cold, you end up wearing the same pair of borrowed thermal underwear, corduroys, three sweaters and your brother's parka from December 23rd to January 4th.
     Anyway, now she's got three kids and whatever nesting frenzy she went through for the last time, netted the skirt in the Giveaway Box dropped off at the rear door of the Goodwill.
     And that's where I scooped it up.
    I love me a good plaid skirt. Maybe it's the frustrated Catholic school girl in me--the one who attended the only Catholic school in the universe that didn't have uniforms and the only Catholic schoolgirl that prayed fervently each summer that they would. But God helps those who help themselves, right?
     So, I yanked it out from between the ATL windowpane plaid wrap and the pilled St. John's Bay glenn plaid fright like a thief in the night. It probably would still be there, of course. The mere thought of thick wool skirts in August in Naples is enough to give you heat stroke; I also scored at 50% off, a gorgeous cashmere pencil skirt and a BCBG MaxAzria cardigan that have been hanging there for weeks.
     And I can't wear it. Even when it does get cold in southwest Florida enough to tolerate it, I just can't pull off the plaid pleated, knee-length skirt anymore.
     Now, I can see this is a gorgeous skirt: the quality of the fabric and the colors; the details in the finishes. If I had a thrift boutique, I could hang it and hope that some tourist from Boston or Paris or some such cool-ish place wandered in, not too badly sunburned and thought of her cold rainy homeland and how very chic she would look in this after her sunburn peeled.
   Or, I could hang it in my storage closet until fall and do an auction style listing on my eBay store for twice what I paid for it--$9.99 and let the Burberry fans and collectors and plaid pleated skirt aficianadoes duke it out from there. I'm guessing it might go for around $78.00. I might ship it to Minneapolis, or Paris or Hong Kong or Christchurch or Chicago or London, where the balding, slightly paunchy former British public school bad boy will ask his wife to put it on with a pair of slouchy ankle boots and a red Benetton sweater.

Easy Money, The Myth

2011-06-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

My mom was an antiques dealer--sort of like those two guys on that reality show on the History Channel.
http://www.history.com/shows/american-pickers

I can tell you from here that bike is not worth it.

http://www.inherited-values.com/2010/01/american-pickers/
Mom had a great eye for really good stuff--collectible china, antique lace, pop art, weird, collectible dolls and toys, jewelry, artisan rugs, coins, watches, marble, novelty piggy banks, antique slot and pachinko machines, wood Norwegian racing sailboats, vintage juke boxes, neon beer signs and other beer-related advertising, roll-top desks, oil portraits of strangers, native American craft, creepy, 19th century German children's books, taxidermied creatures, etc.

I don't think my mother made that much money as an antiques dealer, though she would have made an awesome subject for a reality show. Over the course of my childhood, it became easier and easier for her to lavish time acquiring stuff and more and more difficult for her to get rid of it. This was a mystery to me then. But I'm starting to understand that selling stuff is a lot more difficult than it looks.

eBay has been pretty good to me. I have a great eye for cloth and cut, drape and finish. The hunting and gathering is the fun part. But the money isn't easy. After the thrill of the hunt, as every good cave woman knows, there's the more tedious process of culling and cleaning and putting things on racks to dry. I do a careful inspection and treatment of stains, snags, tears, fraying, pilling, soil, fading, rust, stretching, stink. I pile things into the dry cleaner's with mega coupons.
I organize all items according to season and occasion then spend 2-3 days photographing them: front, back, details, individually and then with other items for combined shipping ideas.

Wolf in a pair of Coach espadrille wedges size 6

Wolf in Donald J. Pliner cork platforms size 6.5

Shoes get polished, conditioned and stuffed with tissue, soles get scrubbed. Sometimes I'll take them to get re-heeled or the soles re-stitched.Shoes are photographed front, top, side, back soles, detail and on a foot. Sometimes I have to use my son's little feet or my neighbor's big feet to go into the sizes I don't fit in.
Everything is measured and listed on eBay with its little stories, histories, provenances--as well as all imperfections, snags, pills, fading, bent elastic waistbands, loose buttons, scuff marks, goofy zippers that don't quite work, . And, since it is second hand, I believe that everyone should get a good deal--whether it's a Chanel blouse or a cowboy-dusted pair of vintage Tony Lama's--so I don't mark it up too much. And I always do auction style so that buyers can determine what something is worth to them.
Everything is shipped out in pretty little white envelopes.
My family sees only that I found a pair of Chanel sandals for 5.99 and sold them for $90.00. Easy money. (To say nothing of the Marc Jacobs capris pants, the Notify Jeans, the Cynthia Vincent slacks or the Roberto Cavalli trousers I bought for 3.49 each or the Alba sandals, size 6.5 I paid $15.00 for and can't sell to save my life!)
It's actually a bit like my old writer's life--everyone thinks they could write a novel. The ones who actually do are surprised at how much more difficult it is than it looks. I used to always run into people at cocktail parties who said, "My life could be a novel. Tell you what--I'll tell you my story, you write it and we'll split the profits."
Now, it's: "I've got some great clothes to sell on eBay. Tell you what--you list them and we'll split the profits."
Write your own stories. List your own stuff.

Welcome to Goodwill--looking for anything in particular?

2011-06-10T06:02:00.000-07:00

"Let me know if I can help you find anything!"
This is a Goodwill store--how would I know what I'm looking for until I find it? But I couldn't resist. "Yes. I'm looking for a round pool table, about one foot high." leopard skin pool table Andy Griffith Pool Table But all I got was the odd look of someone about to call CFS. That's the trouble with having an omniverous appreciation for novelty songs.
But it was May.
May is to Florida Goodwill shoppers as December is to Arctic Santarian Elves as October is to saffron crocus harvesters in La Mancha. The snowbirds have flown back North, after shedding the evidence of their obsessive shopping habits, the surviving children have culled through their dead parents' golf clubs, Spode china and Farragamo shoes, doing drive-by dumps on their way to the beach. The gleaners go into the field and make hay while the sun doth shine.
I swore each time that I wouldn't buy something unless it was an absolute "WOW"--Chanel, Prada, LaBoutin, etc. And still, by the time I left the store, my arms were aching from the piles of stuff. So, I've been doing inventory control. Lots of time listing stuff on eBay.
No time to blog.

The Fickle Fiends of Fashion-Marc Jacobs

2011-04-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

So, I'm finding all this Marc Jacobs stuff at the Goodwill--and I'm buying it like it's going out of style. Which, maybe it is. Because I can't seem to sell it. It usually is impossibly small sizes, including child's size 6, so that's not helping, but I don't understand it: I read about Marc Jacobs brilliant designs. I have heard that people love Marc Jacobs. There are at least 10 people who are NOT models that can wear his strange, twink-ish cuts and severe lines and odd layering.

I'm starting to think maybe Marc Jacobs really mostly loves himself.
But , after all, let's face it: what's not to love?

Oh, I love myself! I mean, you! I meant you!

Look at them! I mean, him! He's so pretty! Okay, him, too! Now, can we get something to wear? Or is that not the point at all?

Okay, so, maybe it's not the point.

Liz Claiborne--Mistress of the Un-Dead

2011-03-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Andy Warhol famous line, that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes has entered the common lexicon of cliches and I'd like to kill him for it. In the first place, it's because, it seemed at the time, he was being kind of snotty--implying that most people (besides him) were too silly to tell the difference between 15 minutes of fame and a career of being famous. But then, we also have Liz Claiborne, who's been famous for a lot longer than that and doesn't look like she's ever going to go away. Even though she's been dead for god-knows how many years.

I don't hold anything against her success personally--the first Fortune 500 company founded by a woman and all the other feminist landmark accolades. And it is nice I suppose that there was a designer out there who designed for the feminine figure--small waste, bigger hips and butts, than for the 12-year-old boy, model's size 0 body, although her clothes don't fit me personally, with my non-existent waist, tiny butt and long legs, but never mind that, either.

There just doesn't seem to be an apparel brand out there that hasn't been bought or sold by Liz Claiborne. It's one great, brain-eating mediocre fashion maw. And bringing Isaac Mizrahi onboard is just one more, big, ol' fat case-in-point.

Isaac Mizrahi seems like he's a girl's best gay friend, tasteless groping and all--his clothes have that retro-girly-classic-with-a-twist-vibe that makes you go "oooooh!" But then...you put it on and go "meh." Who are these designed for? He doesn't seem to understand the human form, let alone the female form. The materials are good, the prints and colors are eye-catching, but something's...wrong. The cut is hurried, the drape is weird, the tailoring and finishing is schlocky--like it was done by a pissed off Malaysian woman with a personal grudge against piping. And no matter what your "season" is, you'll always look like nuclear winter in his colors.
And what will happen to Liz Claiborne's clothes for the curvy with Mizrahi at the design helm?

And personally, it's all tripping me up in the second hand stores. I'm going along, going along the aisles, judging color, fabric, finishes...I see that cute piping or seersucker and I stop. Oh! Liz Claiborne, Claiborne Sport, Emma James, Juicy Couture, Axcess, Mex, even Kate Spade???? (How could you, Kate???)I can't re-sell Liz Claiborne--so when I am fooled by YET another cheeky, houndstooth check skirt at the Goodwill, I wonder when she will die, die, die! But apparently, she keeps coming back--wearing seersucker golf skirts and windowpane plaid dresses that just make you look dead.

War Paint

2010-12-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

This is how I felt

If it weren't for my stash of stiffly ironed shirts, for a while there, I wouldn't have been able to stand up.

I have been in a place that feels not unlike a dark, black wet paper sack--a very thick paper sack--Tyvek or strapping tape--the kind of stuff you can't rip or tear with your teeth--I was in one of those. And it started to scare the hell out of me.

I had no idea how to fight my way out of it.

Ideas are my stock in trade. And I was completely out of 'em. Good ones, anyway. And that's a scary thought. Oh, I had a few, very bad ideas. I was practically infested with those. I felt like a tightly crushed container of toxic waste--black and greasy and twisted and heavy and the bad ideas were making their little wormy ways through the little black banana peel that was serving as my heart.

Nope. I couldn't fight my way out a wet paper sack. And every day seemed like a fight. So, I turned to clothes as my armor.

I dressed carefully every day. Deliberately--like that scene in The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise is dressing for battle. Except that I didn't have the goo-goo-eyed Japanese woman helping me get dressed or the romantic soundtrack playing in the background. It was just me, my clothes and a not-quite housebroken spaniel puppy that kept trying to make off with my shoes.

I worked out every morning. I did not want to work out. I hated every minute of working out. So I made the minutes very short and I punched things and threw things and growled and hissed and hogged the incline bench where I could hang upside down and let the blood rush to my head. Then I showered very carefully--if I was going to be a depressive lunatic, I was going to be a clean depressive lunatic. I flossed. I wore my most expensive perfume. I got waxed. I got my nails done.

I chose ironed shirts and boots. Always a pair of kickass boots. Accessorized with sparkly things.

I put on makeup every day. But it just seemed the thing to do--like applying warpaint. My hair fell out in handfuls. I bought an expensive boar bristle brush so that I would not look like a witch. I avoided looking in mirrors because at times like these the only answer the ol' mirror-mirror-on-the-wall is gonna give you is "DON'T BOTHER." And who needs that?

These things seemed like impossible tasks. To lift one leg to put it in the pants took concentration and force of will, and hail marys--don't even consider the spiritual strength of buttoning them-glory be! Choosing a bra and undies--always careful to match those--was agonizing because they just didn't seem to fit in quite the same way--they were too tight here, pinchy there, not quite full enough where it counts. But like mom always said: you never know if you end up jumping off a bridge, you want to be wearing pretty brassieres and clean undies when they wheel you into the morgue.

And then, I just sort of wandered around, drinking bloody marys for lunch, eating all-chocolate lunches and shopping--retail, mind you. I folded laundry and ironed shirts in 1950's style shirtdresses and pearls, just like Donna Reed and June Cleaver, if Donna Reed ever wore a pair of black lizard Tony Lamas or June Cleaver ever found a pair of Frye motorcycle boots at the Goodwill. I put on lipstick to go to the grocery store--it felt like putting on clown makeup--in expensive China red. I was absolutely useless and horrible to be around, but at least I was well-dressed.

May I recommend some form of this fashion-behavioral-therapy for anyone fighting the good fight. Smell good. Put on your favorite, prettiest clothes. Your kick-assiest boots. Iron your shirts while watching the Marx Brothers--now those guys were nuts. Make the wrinkles go away. Kick some ass.

A Sign of Things to Come

2010-11-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

I have found myself making raspberries as part of my vocabulary.

The other day, in the Goodwill, I had a sudden prophetic vision of me--the tangle-haired old woman with a Goodwill shopping cart full of crap--making big, fat, farting noises with my tongue at every butt ugly holiday sweater I saw, including those on actual people.

Look, I'm not going to go toe-to pointy-elf-bootie toe with you on fashion, but if you need a holiday sweatshirt to get you in the Holiday Spirit, maybe you deserve what you get, though.

     Occasionally, like the clothes in my closet, I have to do a certain amount of inventory and culling of personal habits--like going to the thrift stores every day, or chewing my thumb cuticles into bloody hamburger--after I get senile that won't matter to me so much, but right now, I've got to be at least a teeny bit vigilant, lest I stop showering or start muttering to myself in grimy subways or start putting children into stews and so on.
     I know how it started: people asked me how the writing was going, like they do, and the only answer that fit at the time, because it was just too dismal to verbalize, was to take my thumb and arc it downwards as though tumbling down a steep slope and make a long, wet-tish raspberry: "Thbbbbdbbthbthbthbddbp!"
   Then, I started using it--while I was alone, mind you--when thinking about a particularly annoying and high maintenance individual that I was dealing with...("What is they want from me? Can't they see they're making me crazy??? Oh, thbpthpbthpbtthhhbp. Whatever.")
   I got rid of the individual, I'm doing some writing work, but the verbal tic is hanging on.
   Now, let's get back to those holiday sweaters.

Why? For those holiday wear fans out there, can you just answer that?

I mean, you can really (don't push it) only wear it for one day.
"Let's see, I've brought that dish of green beans with cream of mushroom soup thing and there's Gramma and that lardass Uncle Bob watching the Cowboys...what day is it? What day is it? Oh! Thanks for the wardrobe cue, cuz! Thanksgiving Day. Phew! Because you know--tempis fugit and all that, right? And the food's getting cold. The little embroidered turkey definitely helped me remember what to do with it! We can be thankful for that, at least!"

Aw, hell: C'mon, Gramma: say it with me now: THTHTHTHTHBBBLTHTHBDDDBLT!

How to have a Happy Hour that's Out of This World!!

2010-10-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

CMake checks payable to: Dept. 2 SH, Cocktail Hour Enterprises, St. Louis, MO 63132!

"When Happy Hour talk turns to Astrology, this guide's brief summary wll spark your conversation...and help you know what enthusiasts are talking about. In fact, it will help you have the greatest Happy Hour Party ever!!"

This fabulous kit, and its helpful companion guide, made in Florence, Kentucky, is just a wealth of information! (It is always helpful to know what your guests are talking about! It comes with numerous nuggets of wisdom, such as: "Did you know that every person is said to be born under a "sign of the Zodiac?" the Zodiac is a kind of cosmic calendar..." Ah, the good old days when all this was just pure gibberish to most of us!)

I mean, who wouldn't want to have a swingin' party with these funsters? My folks used to have groovy "happenings" in the '60's and '70's, too, but I don't remember any clear-complexioned and orthodontically endowed, well-coiffed and musically-gifted hipsters having this much fun. (My folks' parties of state politicians, minimalist design types, liberal clergy and old, Big Ten BMOC's favored drab-colored unstructured, nubby pantsuits with chunky Navajo silver--men and women alike!--and chips served in heavy Mexican stoneware with low temp-fired, lead-based glazes. Dad used to give away fancy roosters to his friends and golf partners and they'd have "cockfights" in the living room. I never knew what the big deal was about real cockfights until I moved to south Florida. I always assumed that the "fight" was over when one rooster ran and hid under the sofa...)

But just look at the good, wholesome fun to be had with this kit and a bottle of Southern Comfort! ("It actually tastes good, right out of the bottle!") (And that's right where most of you drink it!)

But face it, after the drums and guitars get put away, and all the crudites and aspics have been picked over, the conversation will turn to astrology. And that's when you'll be outed for the fraud that you are! Better bone up with this handy guide! Soon to be on sale at my eBay store!

The Carrot, the Stick, and the Damn Buttons

2010-10-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1181997/This-dress-far-small--Ill-Women-waste-millions-clothes-theyll-slim-shed-wrong-kind-pounds.html

"I don't know if I can sell these," my friend said, walking the white carpet from her second huge walk-in closet and into her first walk-in closet. She was teetering on a pair of truly gorgeous Jimmy Choo snakeskin heels. I wouldn't have been able to sell them either.
Then again, after the second ankle surgery, her orthopedic surgeon had warned her that if she wanted to avoid further ankle surgeries, she'd ease up on the six inch stilettos. The surgery had been a couple months ago. The Choos were very recent purchases.
Why did she buy a pair of $500 shoes if she knew she couldn't wear them?
"I thought having them would motivate me," she answered tottering dangerously on her wobbly ankle with its white scars.

   "Motivate you to what--try for a custom-made, designer prosthetic device?" I asked, helping her to the bed, where we had been piling the castoff clothes that she wanted me to put on eBay for her. She had sold her house and started a new business; life was changing from a Jimmy Choo-pumps-sort of career to an unpacking-wooden-crates-in-jeans-sort of life.
    But here were these shoes, mesmerizing, taunting. "Trust me," they seemed to whisper like the serpent in the Garden. "If God didn't want you to wear high heels, why would he make your legs look so damn good in them?"
The clothes, piled on the bed like a massive pile of trapper's pelts, were the same sort of : gorgeous, expensive suits, sexy little skirts, elegant, glam cocktail dresses--with the mind-blowing tags still fluttering--all in incredibly small sizes.
She is stylish and petite. But the clothing was invariably, perpetually at least 2 sizes too small. Where would she get that much spare flesh to lose?
   Don't get me wrong--I'm not complaining. Even splitting the profits with her, I'll do very well selling these clothes on eBay. But it is a little heartbreaking, isn't it?
The clothes are like these gorgeous carrots, hanging on the end of a stick. But does it really get you going, or do you, like me, just sit down and put my head in the feedbag and give up?
If we're going to pay that much for clothes, they should fit who we are right now. Oh, sure, the weight will come off. But by the time it does--let's face it--that LaCroix will be out of style, sweetie darling.

The Wrist and the Watch

2010-09-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

Used to be the coolest possible man's accessory

So, what is going on with the wristwatch? I know more and more people are relying on cellular technology to automatically synchronize their mobile phones to Greenwich Mean Time, which is all very well. It might be likened to a return to previous centuries' pocket watch--without the elegant watch chain. Or the little charming tics of winding it when you're nervous, or swinging the watch chain around one finger while waiting on a date. Or the possibility of bequeathing it to one's heirs. ("Gee, dad, did your dad leave you his old cell phone?" "That's right, son, a real iPhone GS3. I dropped this phone in the toilet when I was just six years old--and some day, this dead piece of corrupted, corroded electronics in a bag of rice will be yours. With my grand-dad's old vacuum tube television with the tinfoil on the rabbit ears.")
I personally can't wear a wristwatch. Maybe it's some sort of electromagnetic disturbance in my forcefield, or I have a quartz in my colon, or maybe my chakras are all out of whack, but I can literally stop a clock. I like wristwatches. I wear them. But in a day or so, they don't work. Which is maybe why I'm always worried I'm going to be late.

The Status Symbol's New Place?

Wristwatches are still being made, though. People seem to be buying wristwatches--the expensive ones still have cache, anyway. It just seems there's a trend where no one's actually wearing them on the wrist.

I saw this ad with Anna Sharapova and I thought, "Hey, she looks pretty badass."--like she's using it as like brass knuckles or something. She'll put it back on her wrist after she clocks that guy in the mouth.

True--this guy can't be looking at his watch at work.

But then, they started, you know, building on it. Pretty soon, all these people with expensive watches aren't actually wearing them.

They're with them, sure, but they aren't shackled by them, they're not wearing them like a bourgeois pair of handcuffs! These are prestige timepieces, fella! The important thing is to own one, I suppose, not to actually have to wear one. Being on time? Pah.

Big hands...Big Watch

    Once upon a time, it used to be a bit of a status symbol to not just have the watch, but to have the watch tan--the little white bracelet where your Longines was--that showed you could be out in the middle of the day playing tennis or golf--not at home smoking and trying to sort through bills and account payables and deciding on whether to not pay the power, the phone or the gas bill that month.
     My mother would run into her country club friends in the grocery store. They'd be dressed in their tennis dresses--but it wasn't just the spiffy white pleated skirts that was the key to showing you were a lady of leisure--the key was the tan. Anyone could put on a pair of little bloomers under a polyester pique number and footie socks with the little balls on the back that matched your earrings and go out to the grocery store, hoping to be seen near the meats section--but you had to put in actual time to get that perfect little white strip on your wrist.
      "I'd just love to stay and chat with you, but I'm so late!" Barb Strinkwahler would say, placing a plank of prime sirloin in her cart with her cottage cheese and celery. "I told Lou I'd make something on the Weber. And, oh, my gosh--" She checks her wrist, before realizing there's no watch there, just that bright, white stencil on her freckly, leathery arm. "And now, I left my watch in my locker at the club," she says, looking embarrassed for some reason.
     My mother wasn't fooled. "She just wants everyone to see that she was playing tennis," she said, pitching a pound of hamburger in our cart with her carton of Pall Malls and the 2-for-1 packages of Buddig corned beef. "Why didn't she take her watch off when she was all sweaty while she was playing tennis? Now that she's running late, she takes her watch off, but not her tennis dress?"
   It was odd, but it didn't stop me from wanting it: the weird, liver-y dark tan, the sleeveless white polyester dresses with the skinny arms, the dinner of steak on a Weber--whatever the hell a Weber was.

    But of course, now we know that all that sun is bad, that because cow farts are causing global warming and that those who eat red meat are liable for the nine month golf season, and that no one wears white on the tennis court anymore, I'm lost. I don't know what to covet. It's hard to type with this big watch on my hand.

The Fall of the Wristwatch

2010-09-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

First one to arrive...again--note the wristwatch

     I have heard that the wristwatch is on its way out. I'm not sure if this is a trend that bears watching (ha ha) or not--wristwatches imply that you have places to be--and care whether you're there or not on time. And I've trained myself not to care by placing myself in a little bubble where I realize that when I make appointments with other people, I must have nothing particularly pressing to do. Ever. Time is a liquid and arbitrary thing.
     (As a compulsively prompt person, I have gained the impression that promptness is rather passe, even a little gauche. Maybe it's telling that both of those terms are French...
     Anyway! If everyone else is late, then maybe I'm actually running two events behind. I can't help it, though: I arrive everywhere five minutes early, no matter what I do, even though I never have a working timepiece. Even if I mosey around the block for hours, or do the NY Times crossword puzzle at a nearby chain cafe, or sit in my car and re-live the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in real time, I am still five minutes earlier than everyone else. I have taken to peering into parked cars outside to see if there are other guests staking out the place, waiting to see when the first pigeon arrives--"okay! She's in! Let's go out for a drink at that really secret, super-hip place that only cool people know about and come back in a few hours!"
   But getting ready to go someplace with other people--so I can find out where those super-hip places where people go so they can be fashionably late--is a bit of an agony. I follow them from room to room, watching what they're doing: putting on underwear; taking underwear off; putting on different underwear; examining underwear in mirror by standing on a chair and jumping up and down. Trimming toenails. Trying out different outfits by holding it in front, leaning back slightly and sticking out one foot; laying down and read Proust with a Diet Coke and Cheezits.
   "You know, I never read Proust when I was supposed to in college. I totally did Clifnotes in school," she says. "I don't know why, but I kept the book for some reason...What time were we supposed to meet them?" she asks. She puts on a pair of pants. Progress.
      It takes me a moment to answer her, so maybe I'm the one making us late. Do the underwear make her look thinner? Sexier? I honestly can't tell. I decide it must be more fashionable and I am suddenly ashamed that my bra does not match my panties. She goes in and out of the bathroom doing things with irons and eyelash curlers and sponges. Does it make her look more luminous? Thinner? Is she in there tossing chicken bones and muttering some sort of glamour spell--mirror-mirror-on-the-wall? Am I missing something I should have learned in girl school?
     "Seven o'clock," I answer. "They made our reservations six months ago for seven o'clock."

this guy cares about promtness.

      "I think she said six-thirty." She flips through sixteen channels and watches a moment or two of the weather channel.
     "It's six thirty right now," I say, looking out the window at the weather. "But maybe she said six." This ploy of telling late people to meet you an hour earlier than you actually will meet them never works--they sulk that you would stoop that low.
     "They're saying a cold front is coming down from Canada, maybe I should put on different underwear."
     "No!" I say, blocking the way to the underwear drawer. There is a sharp yowl; I have shut the cat in the drawer. "The cold front called and said it'd be late. It's taking AmTrak."
    "Did you slam my kitty in the drawer???"
    "No!"
    "Oh, my god! You've probably broken her paw or something!!!" She wriggles the drawer open; the cat flies out across the room and shoots under the bed.
     "See? She's fine!"
     "Oh, poooooor kittty!!! Kitty!" She's on her belly in her underwear trying to coax the kitty out from under the bed. "I wonder if I have any chicken bittles to coax her out?" She starts to go to the kitchen. "Wait--maybe I should use Bitty Kitty Nippies..." She goes to her purse.
     "Wait," I say, throwing myself down on the floor and grabbing Miss Nitty Kitty by the back leg and dragging her out with a mop of dustbunnies clinging to her fur. "See? Perfectly fine!"
      "I think I should call the vet." She's standing in her underwear, her hand to her mouth, like a doctor in a daytime drama, examining the comatose patient as the cat writhes out of my hand and sprints for the window.
     "Why? She's fine. She's just creating drama hobbling around on three legs like that."
     "I used to have my vet's number on my cell, but then I dropped my cell in the concrete walk and I couldn't get it out before the concrete set. Do you see the phone book anywhere?"
     "Come on! It's seven thirty," I say, "your vet will be out eating dinner."
     "Maybe I need to take her by the emergency vet. I'll need to change. That vet's office is always freezing!"
     She starts to change her underwear again.
     "No, look!" I say. The cat has clawed agilely up my leg. "See?" I point. She beams. "She's as good as new!"
     "But you've ruined your sweater," she says with a frown, looking at the Cheezit crumbs, old toenails and cat hairs that have clung to my cashmere sweater. "We'll have to go by your house so you can change."
     "It's eight o'clock," I say, using her tape roller on my dress. It leaves a carpet of cat hair on my front with the Cheezit crumbs. "See? Perfect! They'll think it's beading."
      She frowns. "Well, I don't know..." Then she brightens. "You can wear something of mine! That red Jil Sander would be perfect!! It needs to be ironed, though, and oooh--then you'll have to change your shoes...oh, and your underwear aren't right."
    "It's eight-thirty." There is no way in Hell I'll let her see my black bra, which I wore under my black cashmere doesn't match my pink Spanx that go so well under the pink wool pencil skirt.
     I know that the person we're meeting is also late, doing the same sort of thing with her cat, her Cheezits, her copy of Proust. I know this, but I can't feel it. It feels like the person we were supposed to meet an hour and a half ago met up with somebody really cool and went off to have a drink with them at the bar that only the cool people know about and I will have missed again.
      "You'll also need to re-do your makeup to cover up those gouges in your eyes from where you dug at them with your fingernails..."

      After waiting in restaurants for twenty minutes, I'll phone.
     "Are we still on for lunch today?"
     "Oh, yes. I thought so."
     "Well. You did say 12:00."
     "Yes."
     "And now it's 12:20. And I need to get back to work and--"
     "I know! I know! It's just that I got into a huge argument with the exterminator and--"
     "About what?"
     "About spraying those chemicals in the house!!"
     "That's mostly what exterminators do, you know--they spray things in your house."
     "I know but it's just so terrible for the environment! And so toxic for your health!"
     "Then cancel your exterminator."
     "Ew. And live with all those bugs? I told him that I was going to call his manager and write a letter!"
     "Wouldn't it be easier just to get, like, a lizard--one that eats bugs?" I suggest, motioning the waiter to come over with frantic pawing signals. "You could just let it crawl around your house and be done with it."
   "That's what I suggested to the exterminator, and he told me straight out that the company didn't do that. I told him I was going to write him to Greenorg!"
      "Did you ever settle that dispute with your lawn company?" I ask. She was late for a rather important business meeting last month because she got into a bit of a row insisted that they cut the hedges by hand; she could hear the bushes screaming, she said. The police were called. But no one could understand that she wanted to press charges on the gardeners for assault on bushes with a deadly weapon.
      "What?"
     She doesn't remember the little, constant dramas that distract her for approximately 25 minutes to an hour and a half for each appointment she makes. I don't want to remind her; she'll check her journal.
   "Anyway, I'm sooooo sorry I'm late!"
     "So are you coming to lunch?"
     "I'm just totally stressed out."
      "I understand." And I do. I'm stressed out just listening to the little grenade of chaos that comes with each excuse. I've communicated, through sign language, that I would like the chicken caesar salad to go--I've made the little fork-to-mouth actions and the international sign for 'chicken' which is to put your hands under your armpits and flap your elbows.
     "So 'no' to lunch, then?"
     "Do you mind? I'm soooooooo sorry."
     "Yes. I know.
     "My husband got me another watch for our anniversary. I've told him that nobody wears watches anymore. You're sure you don't mind if we reschedule?"
     No, I don't mind. But I finally get my chicken caesar and drift away. Into my own little time/space continuum. Some other time zone altogether.

And now, It's time for me to get back to work).

Back in Fat.

2010-07-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Okay--I'm fat again.

There. I've said it.

Yes, it's been creeping up on me for about 6 years. Starting with a gig writing travel articles during which which I indulged in vast and lengthy complimentary dinners of shrimp and rice and pralines and cream and oyster sandwiches and gained two pounds, which kicked me out of the "at-goal Lifetime" program of Weight Watchers and landed me on the "paid lifetime" program of Weight Watchers, which eventually led me to get a job with Weight Watchers, under the delusion that the fate of my employment rested with getting my weight down, which ultimately led to another 6 pounds out of corporate spite (I'm a Weight Watchers' leader and a fitness instructor--how could I possibly be considered fat??). Why, I still fit in my skinny jeans! I've just moved up a bra size, which got me a lot of free drinks. Nothin' wrong with that?!

Except that, with my genetic legacy, it's: tiny little butt; big ol' gut. And, along with that, the other, less glamorous issue of moving up from a C to a D is that, soon after the pulchritudinous heaving of the bosoms, one's arms follow suit--swelling like two giant bologna sausages that would make any HofBrauhaus Fraulein right proud. (But not that attractively.)

And then another two pounds. Just for the hell of it, apparently.

Today, I found a pair of Cavalli trousers at the Goodwill in my size and for a moment, knew that I couldn't pull them off; sincerely believed I did not deserve them.

So, let's just wait a cotton-pickin' minute here, and let me re-think putting those Cavallis on eBay! Sorry, all you curvy Cavalli fans--these pants are not for sale. The whole eBay thing started because I thought I'd sell the great stuff that wasn't my size and be able to keep the really cool stuff that was in my size. And besides, which, wearing a 10-pound suit of lard makes southern summers really, really HOT. And I'm not talking about salsa-dancing, either.

So, I'm back in the seats at Weight Watchers and not at the front; walking the walk. I don't want to say it's Cavalli pants that are the motivating factor here. I only paid
$3.49 for them. It's the confidence to pull them up and pull them off
that I'm after.

Mad Hatters

2010-07-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Some elements of surprise during my costume design class: that my students had a good time and that they came up with some very interesting surprises.

I tell my students that I don't particularly like children in general, so if they're going to act like children, I'm not the teacher for them. This sounds rather harsh, even to me. But I suspect that young women of this age don't want to be treated like children, so this actually works out well for all of us. Whew! In return, they're willing to indulge my requests to draw their faces without looking at their paper; to abandon an idea that seems like a little old lady going to lunch with the Red Hat Society would think "was real cute."

Now. As for design: All found objects and hats from the thriftstore. Hot glue. Wire. A bag of balloons. Fabric remnants. Newspaper. Needle and thread. Duct tape. An old rabbit fur coat that I found in someone's garbage. Umbrellas. A crochet hook. A pot of lemonade. Fancy cookies.

The Rake's Progress. Or: How the Purge Goes

2010-06-21T09:16:00.001-07:00

Several cubic feet of things chucked chock-a-block into boxes and into the back of my car. An old dog bed--which probably should be just thrown out--and camisole tops and shorts that are years too young for me, which probably also should be thrown out. I pitched some old ceramic top bottles that I was saving for heaven knows what--I think I thought we were going to marinate our own vinegars or some such crafty thing. Duplicate shoes. Ugly toys. And there are so many ugly toys for boys. I worry that the boys will have no toys after I throw out the ugly and annoying ones. You try to throw out your kids' art work and try to explain it to them when they find it in the garbage! How did that get in there???

I gauge my progress on my satisfaction of how I feel at the cubic footage I've freed up. I do a little mathematical equation using our monthly mortgage, our home's square footage, solving for how much per month we've been paying out to store stacks of Yoga Journal magazines and empty Weck jars. And some people think there's no practical use for high school algebra.

The result, I suppose, is nominal. My sons brought in the stacks of art they made at art camp last week. My husband brought in tables from his restaurant and he's refinishing them out on the porch. I'm going to the thrift stores to comb through for more Eileen Fisher and Lilly Pulitzer. Although pickings are getting slim in the midsummer lull, I'd hate to miss another $800.00 coat like the one I found last week for $3.49. It's like unraveling a giant sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting...

Purging

2010-06-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

I've been looking at those shows about hoarding. Ha. Child's play. I coulda been the host of THAT show. They never make enemies with their own mothers, trying to explain that one really should dispose of boxes of books and doll clothes that had been shat in by raccoons. I'm sure I don't why the raccoons shit in their own nests. Perhaps it should be a lesson to all of us of what NOT to do.

So, I've got my mom's house in the back of my mind. Always. But as summer closes in and the A/C hums and drones, and the jungle creeps closer, I start to get a bit batty. And I'm thinking of raccoons. I feel a big purge coming on.

Empty boxes crying out to fulfill my fantasies of simplicity. I see the stuff huddling in corners, in stacks, and cluttering up my shelves tremble in fear. They are right to do so.

Show Up, Shut Up, Wear Beige

2010-06-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

Instructions to mothers of the groom.

The reason why groomsmen all wear the same suit to a wedding--so if the groom doesn't show up, everyone can just take a step to the left. The people on that side of the church are just props, baby.

Your role, as mother of the groom, is to provide a groom. And maybe a brother for a spare. The extent of your input is limited to saying how lovely everything is.

The bride's strapless ballgown in the church? Why, it's lovely, of course. The mother of the bride's equally revealing gown to show off her boob job? Lovely. The new wife of the bride's father who describes herself as a "cougar" (in the latter part of her nine lives) (meow!)? Nope! Nope! She's so lovely. The "blending" ceremony in which all the members of the bridal party dance around and fill a vase with pink and blue vials of sand to symbolize the "blending" of two souls into one purple-ish vase of sand...or something? Lovely, lovely, lovely.

The mother of the groom simply floats along all this loveliness in a wildly elegant beige silk dress. The bourbon won't hurt, either.

Skirts

2010-06-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

I love skirts. I loved this skirt. I still love this skirt.

I bought it for Derby one year. I was going to be sitting in the Jockey Club and thought it would was cute and punchy and would work if the weather was warm or cold: high-heeled sandals and a white blouse if warm and white wool tights, a white cashmere turtleneck and black Gucci boots if it was cold. But I've never figured out Louisville fashion don't's. My cousin shook her head sadly when I showed it to her. You just don't wear black to Derby. And you NEVER wear wool tights and boots. It could be 30 degrees and snowing and that's just too darn bad: it's little spring sandals or spring shoes; seersucker and floaty florals and little tailored polkadot whatnot. So, I wore a little halter dress and red sandals and the outrageous hat and fit in. But it was pretty cold that Derby. So the lack of support I didn't get from the halter dress didn't matter.

The skirt made its own events. I wore it to an opening of Marilyn Manson's paintings in Sao Paulo. Daisy Berkowitz grabbed my ass in that skirt. And again to Art Basel in Miami Beach. It was in a photo with Tony Bennett, though I've lost the photo. A woman kissed my boots while I was wearing this skirt while dancing on a speaker at a drag show. The lipstick was watermelon pink.

I had it drycleaned. I turned 43. And now it's for sale. And I still love this skirt.

2010-05-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Is style something a woman is born with or can she develop it over time? Or do styles catch up with a woman if she holds the line?

Oh, honey, forget that mullet haircut idea--you remember how you justified it: "practical in the front, party in the back"--that was never a good idea in any era. And, heaven forbid, if it comes around again, it will still be bad. On the other hand, the beehive, in all its outrageous permutations, from Marie Antoinette to Cindy Wilson from the B-52's and Ab-Fab's Patsy keeps coming around looking just as baroque and brash as ever. So you keep on teasing and hanging with the Aquanet, girl!

I know. I am an unlikely fashionista. I look more like the hefty Midwestern farm girl I aspire to be than the nervy, bulimic, shopaholic fag hag that I have been now and again. Maybe wearing all the too-tight, decade-old hand-me-downs from my sisters made me fashion self-conscious while giving me a first-hand lesson in vintage: scratchy wool underwear from the 1960's and polyester jumpsuits retain odors for YEARS and brew some of their very own over the years of being in mothballs. Nossiree, you never forget your first hand-me-down polyester jumpsuit. If the term 'cameltoe' had been around then, I woulda likely been the prickly heat-afflicted, polyester-clad poster child.

But my years as a costume designer and wardrobe mistress taught me a few things about cut and fit and drape and fabric. I can do an entire thrift store in 15 minutes, just by looking at the quality of fabric, the set of a shirt collar, the finish on a sleeve. All very well and good for the busty woman playing Appassionata von Climax in a shoestring budget production of Li'l Abner or the waify Creole playing Macbeth's heath-dwelling witch. So why did it take me years more to learn that daily dressing is simply a matter of costuming oneself just as much as dressing Cinderella for the Chicago Opera?

Even for someone interested in fashion, style took a while to develop. Maybe especially for someone interested in fashion, it takes a while. Trying trendy things that don't look good on you, trying not to care because you feel fat and you feel like you don't deserve to be interested in fashion, or trying not to look like you care about keeping up with fashion because it's so superficial.

But it's not. And fashion isn't style.

Life is the role of a lifetime. Dress the part!

Decide what point you want to make and then make it. Like a player who struts and frets his hour upon a stage. Use trendy stuff only if it helps you make your point, or to show people you haven't been in a coma for the past 10 years.If you find great second hand stuff that looks a little worn, use it to your advantage! It says "I've had this for years! I thought it was cool before it became cool. And I don't care if it ceases to become cool. It works for my character in this particular scene."

And maybe that's style. Fashion will catch up with you later.

The Lost Designer of the 80's

2010-04-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know.

And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...?

So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just have a bunch of Faded Glory tees and Gap jeans...but where?

Go for the Pulitzer

2010-04-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Naples, Florida: the epicenter of all things Lilly.
All those breezy prints and sporty, shift dresses may have been designed for socialite, seasonal bluebloods in Palm Beach, but it's the practical wives of nuts-and-bolts Midwestern industrialists and Captains of Yeast, Sausage and Baking Soda empires and Generals of Mills who truly rally beneath the bright-colored banner--after all, those saturated, citrus hues and quirky textile designs wear like iron and endure season after season, doncha know.
I suspect the owners of my found Lillys had to die before she parted with her collection, her sons prying that hardly-worn-yet wrap skirt out of her cold, dead fingers. She almost certainly came back to haunt them because they buried her in the lavender suit. She specifically told them she wanted to sleep for eternity in the super comfy, new blue print silk.

A Happening

2010-03-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

She just couldn't believe how the fondue turned out. And the matching orange shag carpeting was perfectly raked until that Maxine Murphy staggered into the suspended copper firepit and spilled her Martini and Rossi all over the place.

Used Violins, New Harps

2010-02-24T11:50:00.000-08:00

My older son is about to graduate to a concert harp. We're going to return his old Troubador harp to his old teacher go look for a new harp. His new teacher wants to come along and help him find the right new harp. Harps have a strange tendency to be rather picky about who plays them.

My younger son has graduated to a half-size violin. We're selling his smaller violins, which we bought new and have gotten him a very nice used violin that has a mellow, reassuring sound. This old violin has been making music before my son was even born. It sounds like it knows what it's doing.

In the meantime, I'm wrestling with shopping for a new anything. I had to play piano and oboe as a kid because we had those sitting around the house. I didn't think that instruments were anything you went out and actually bought at a store. I just thought you picked up whatever was lying around and then were forced to learn to play it. We had guitars and complicated-looking mandolins and battered violins and a cello, too. So why did my mother insist on the oboe and then complain when I practiced, saying it sounded like a cat in heat? Later she would acquire an exploded harp, a dented sousaphone and a marimba, but she never insisted I learn those.

All those silent instruments. I still have my oboe, but my lips, which are scarred, no longer have the sensitivity for that fiddly little reed. It fascinates my children though. They take it from its dusty case and assemble the wooden tube with its mysterious valves and keys. But they chose their instruments. They never claim to want to learn to play the oboe. And Lord knows, I'm not going to make them.

2010-02-20T04:55:00.000-08:00

Boy clothes. Please mommy! Can I have this? Please? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!

If boys like it, they will wear it. Out. It will turn into a rag and is no good for anything. Even dust. Occasionally, you will see boy clothes at the Goodwill. Occasionally you will get them in a sack as a hand-me-down. Do not bother with these items. They are dust and upon contact with the dust, unto dust they shall return.

There are some things, however, that one shall seek in boys' clothes: nice sweaters, dress clothes, dress shoes. For these are avoided by boys, worn only for a few moments before they are stripped away and hidden in the airless space between the mattress and the box spring.

These are the nice sweaters of boys who live in Florida. One was once worn during Thanksgiving in Seattle and once in an unusual Sunday cold snap. The other was begrudgingly worn thrice. This year's unusual, extended freeze, they were too small.

cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110497275674&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Cruel Shoes

2010-02-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

Cinderfella's slippers. These are not women's shoes. They're too small for me, but I just couldn't pass em up. They looked like they've been danced in a carpeted cage or around a block a few times--London's Trade in Clerkenwell or Orange in Vauxhall.

But those British and their shoes--these may be cheap looking, but they aren't cheaply made. The inside is supple kid leather and the little bitty straps are like dainty horse bridle buckles. So, how did these nasty little things get across the Atlantic?

He packed em up to do a little partying in South Beach, and never went home. American food, barefoot beach walking and the salt air caused fallen arches and splayed feet. Finding the man who fits the slipper will be impossible. Let's do that.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110497269989

Genie Box--the secret word of the day!

2010-01-27T06:54:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I tried to settle into Florida life: I looked for things that bespoke a life of travel to exotic places and bizarre climes. This box was one of those kind of things. I love little boxes with cunning little latches--little hiding places for Borrowers and Indians, love tokens, illicit things. This one always gives me the impression of the place where one would consult a genie. I opened it saying "Mekalekkahi-Mekahidy-ho!"

Little Brown Riding Boots

2010-01-26T11:27:00.000-08:00

A girl who knows her boots can see the good ones at 20 paces: the architecture of the cut that makes legs look long, lean and strong; the quality of the leather that only gets better with tough wear--more supple, a softer sheen--the kind of leather that says something about where the wearer has been, and of course, where she's going.

These Cole Haan boots were that sort of boot--with the rubber tread that makes sense for winter sidewalks and the zipper that can tuck the jeans in all nice and smooth. The trouble is, they're just the teensiest bit too small for me--and it killed me to stand in them in thin socks. It kills me just a little to part with them. But I'll keep my eyes out for another pair.

2010-01-21T20:40:00.000-08:00

You're either an Eileen Fisher wearer or you are not.

Those simple shapes and clean lines bespeak the life of a wife of a minimalist architect or a Swiss art collector at home on Sanibel Island: undyed pageboy haircuts and artsy, German made spectacles; square shoulders and an eclectic music collection that includes Ella Fitzgerald and Lightnin' Hopkins but lots of German opera.

Eileen Fisher was a graphic designer from the good ol' University of Illinois, with good shoulders and a dream--I admire that. It was a good dream of elegant, relaxed drape and excellent fabrics, it just didn't work on me--more of a baroque odalisque than lanky Pablo Giacometti sculpture or a Calder mobile.

Hudson Bay Blanket

2010-01-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

I found a scarlet 2 point Hudson Bay blanket at the Goodwill yesterday. One black stripe. New and vibrant. Gorgeously thick, and warm for the bizarrely cold Florida weather. Itchy. Some years ago, I'd found a white 1.5 point imperial tone chief's blanket that was stained and motheaten. I thought I was terribly clever to turn it into couch cushions, but the results were so itchy, I couldn't stand to sit on them.

According to the Hudson Bay Company history, the term is derived from the French term for "empointer," to stitch on cloth, but the "point blanket" was a French, 18th century weaving system that indicated the finished overall size of the felted blanket, not its worth in beaver pelts, which I thought was a bit disappointing. They became something of a "must-have" item among first nation tribes.

+++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++

Other History from the HBC website:

Blackfoot Indians dressed in Hbc blankets ca. 1925
HBCA 1987/363-W-114/1

Hbc point blankets in Kwakiutl Indian house at Fort Rupert, 1898
HBCA 1987/363-W-114/6

The Point System
Each blanket was graded as to weight and size using a point system. Points were identified by the indigo lines woven into the side of each blanket. A full point measured 4 - 5.5 in.; a half point measured half that length. The standard measurements for a pair of 1 point blankets was: 2 ft. 8 in. wide by 8 ft. in length; with a weight of 3 lb. 1 oz. each. Points ranged from 1 to 6, increasing by halves depending upon the size and weight of the blanket.

Group of Indians at corner of Notre Dame and Albert Streets, Winnipeg, 1881
HBCA 1987/363-W-114/5

Colours
The 3 point white blanket, woven with a wide coloured stripe or bar at each end, was originally made for winter use. These blankets were popular with the First Nations people as they provided excellent camouflage in winter. There were also solid-coloured blankets in indigo, scarlet, green and light blue. The well-known white blankets with stripes of green, red and yellow, sometimes referred to as "chief's blankets", are known as multistripes. They were apparently introduced around 1800. The "Pastel Tones" - light colours with darker tone-on-tone bars - were introduced in 1929 and were supplemented by the "Deep Tones" and Imperial Tones" during the 1930s. These additional colours were designed to better meet the needs of modern interior design schemes.

Quality in Manufacturing
Originally the weavers of Witney, Oxfordshire were the principal suppliers of Hbc blankets. By the mid 19th c. demand for blankets had forced the Company to source its blankets in Yorkshire as well. The wool was (and still is) a blend of varieties from Britain and New Zealand, each selected for its special qualities that will make the blanket water resistant, soft, warm and strong.

The wool is dyed before it is spun, then air and sun dried to brighten the colours. The blankets are woven 50% larger than their final finished size, thanks to a milling process which reduces them to prevent further shrinkage. In addition, the milling prevents the blanket from hardening when exposed to severe climatic conditions.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The cashier pawed through the thick folds of the blanket, looking for a price tag. I thought of those blankets full of smallpox sent out to indian reservations during that particularly horrid winter of American shame. "Careful," I said to the girl, as if to myself. "You never know if these blankets are full of smallpox."

She jerked her hands away. "What???"

"You know--those blankets they gave to the indians?"

"What????"

"Never mind. It was a terrible joke. Here's my credit card; I don't need a bag."

I wrapped the blanket over my shoulders to ward off the late afternoon chill; it smelled of clean, new wool. The weight of its history made my shoulders itch.

2010-01-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

The minimalist credo: if you don't need it, don't buy it.

I've been getting along very well with what I have for years--a bachelor's degree and a quirky willingness to do just about anything. But what will a Master's Degree in English do for me?

I always imagined I'd convince my husband to move somewhere with a venerable university where I could get my graduate degree in architecture in ivy-smothered brick buildings to the soundtrack of "St. Elmo's Fire." 17 years later, that just hasn't happened.

So, a new M.A. program at a tropical university in English. I am no minimalist.

2010-01-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Thinking of starting an ebay shop from this blog. To have something to do with those too small Cole Haan boots and the Eileen Fisher sweaters that don't quite do it for me.

Funny, though, how an idea will cause you to procrastinate other things because you're stalled in getting started.

Small steps. Small steps.

Antica

2009-09-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

I went to Italy with the intention of finding some really good, old stuff.

I've come home from Italy without finding anything.

Well, of course, that's not true in the metaphorical sense. I re-discovered friendships and cemented old ones. And I saw lots and lots of good, old stuff. I just couldn't get any of that into my suitcase. Italy is just chocked full of old stuff--thousands of years-old stuff, in fact. And pardon me if I've misunderstood all the issues of Progressive Architecture and Elle Design, but supposedly it's also full of really new, groovy stuff--Italian designed shoes and clothes and light fixtures and hip, chrome, minimalist furniture. Italian design. So, somewhere around that country, I thought, there would be at least a couple centuries worth of stuff floating around somewhere in between, you know, Marcus Agrippa and Donatella Versace.

There had to be someplace where Italian women dump their old Prada shoes and Mussolini-era cigarette lighters? Those mimimalist apartments and sleek pied a terres have to be scraped out of the old, minimalist stuff to make way for the new minimalist stuff, after all. So where did it go? Oh, I ran across a few little chi-chi "antico" shops with pricey-pricey marble busts and Napoleonic-era commodes and the like, but where were they dropping off the used Virgin Mary statues and the scuffed Tod's loafers?

We didn't spend all our time in the touristy spots--we got lost quite a bit and I kept peeking around because, naturally, I wanted to find the thrift stores. You'd think I'd have run across even just one little consignment shop where Roman housewives dumped off their old Alessi coffee sets and 1980's era Memphis knock-offs. I tried to ask a few Italians where these shops might be, but my Italian is not so very good. "Anticos? Si! Si!" and they'd point out the fusty marble bust and commode outlets. I'm not sure I could adequately describe that I wanted used shoes and second hand crap. And even if I had, the responding expressions intimated that this was not something that should I should want to have known willy-nilly. "She says she wants to buy and wear old women's clothing and garbage shoes that a man didn't want to throw away? It's crazy, I know--just give her prosciutto and smile."

So, I never got to paw through piles of used Italian crap--which, if you expounded on the line of reasoning that other American tourists put to Italian food, or lifestyle, or healthcare, or anything else you might name--would be soooo much better than piles of used American crap.

The prosciutto was great.

2009-09-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

A fellow writer friend of mine has given me a bit of grief over writing a blog, basically stating the old wisdom: 'why will they buy the cow if they're getting the milk for free?' Although, since he is a novelist, he used something more creative and more PC, and it's telling I can't remember what it was.

During the '70's my mother pointed out--perhaps reasonably, in retrospect--that your basic corner whore was smarter than those academic feminists who declared that not only did good girls do it on the first date, good girls should do it on the first date. "At least the whores are getting paid something for the job they do. And if those women think being able to go out and work their asses off at some office and then go home and put out for free is going to make them liberated, they've got another thought coming." She took a dramatic drag on her Pall Mall. "I tell you: work like a horse--they're gonna ride you like one."

Fair enough. Probably explained why she was so disappointed when I declared my major in architecture and not theater as she'd hoped.

I'm thinking of this blog as a sort of factory outlet--you know, thoughts and ideas that just aren't quite cut out for retail.

good bones

2009-08-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

"She can wear a paper sack and look good--she's got such great bone structure." People often said this about my oldest sister in a way they might have hoped would trickle down to the rest of us as a genetic compliment. It was true. Johanna is very tall and has cheekbones and tons of sharp, jutting attitude that could pull off anything. Dare to tell her she didn't look good in that floor-length embroidered, nomadic goatherd's leather coat with the shaggy fur collar, the cowboy boots over her corduroy overall pants legs or the holly twigs in her fierce, swept-up-'do. The thing is, she would put them all on, as if donning a sack. And, on her, damned if they didn't look good.

I knew what they really meant by my sister's 'great bone structure.' She was thin. While my other sisters and I were shorter and periodically on the upholstered side, Johanna was a sort of high-backed shaker chair-- an elaborate coat-hanger--for her hip-hugger jeans, tiny tees, and ultramod miniskirts.

I was thinking about this as I flipped through the fashion spread of W, where edgy, apparently sleep-deprived models who have worn themselves ragged with hard living in oddly clean urban alleyways, have been reduced to wearing actual paper sacks. What is this supposed to tell the rest of us about fashion? What are we supposed to do with this information? Is this a new trend? Are we all going to rustle around in recycled paper frocks?

W doesn't make a lot of pretense, which I like. We normal people aren't supposed to do anything with this except maybe to feel unworthy. Perhaps they were thinking the same thing about the model and using the fur coat like a rain poncho--'she could wear a paper sack and look good!...hey...'

But lots of women's magazines would like you to believe that, with a certain amount of fashion know-how, any woman can take fashion from the runway to their own driveway. With a few simple tips, anyone can look leggy, young, six feet tall and 110 pounds. The thing to remember is to play up your assets and hide figure flaws! This is all fine and good.

But I'm not buying it. Oh, sure, dressing in one color from head to toe can go a ways to lengthening your lines, shiny spandex pants makes your thighs look huge and "Where's the Beef?" printed on a beefy crew neck tee shirt on a girl with big boobs and a thick neck won't do her any more favors than it will anyone else. The thing is, if you are on the fluffy side, you can't be slouching around in just anything. Stylishly shredded boyfriend jeans? "Look at you, you're Moonbeam McSwine," as my Mother would say, referring to the filthy-but-stacked slattern in Li'l Abner. Shabbily chic ruffled blouses and slouchy, ruched dresses made for elfin tubercular heroines? Most of us are in serious danger of looking like we're wearing doilies on overstuffed sofa slipcovers.

Swimming in these treacherous waters takes skill and nerve and at least a Queen Latifah-size attitude. Companies like Anthropologie and Sundance have made a floor-to-ceiling fantasy of lanky cowgirls and bony-chested bohemians draped in slouchy, dull-colored cashmere cardigans and thick tweedy skirts, perched on miraculously clean vintage pickup trucks, looking like spindly orphans fresh from the train, facing their grim new lives with begrudging, childless homesteaders. Eventually, we know from the stories, the spunky orphans will win their hearts and go on to become famous writers, or alcoholic wives of state governors. For the rest of us, that truck had better be clean, otherwise the only image a girl that doesn't have that exasperated, twangy, sharp thinness of a barbed wire fence will send out is "corn fed."

You can learn all the little tricks--the nipping in at the waist, the drawing the eye this way and that, using prints to camouflage a thousand sins. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If you're feeling fat, the bravado goes by the board. If you're not feeling the fabulous, you've got to flip them the finger, so don't forget to pinch off a little attitude with those textured hose that make everyone except the 19th century matchstick girl look like Gumby.

Lots of home magazines and design books would also like you to believe that, with a can of enamel paint and a little elbow grease, you can turn that flea-market find into a chic, witty treasure for your home. This is...well fine--not completely garbage, but take a good, hard look at those flea markets. The pictures show Saturday morning hipsters in their groovily ratty boyfriend jeans and those dull-colored cardigans wandering through row upon row of open air aisles of nubby postwar modern chairs and dappled but still elegant beveled mirrors, nobly beaten Chippendale secretaries and graying, galvanized French flower buckets. Where are the tables of Avon Skin-So-Soft and fringed Harley Davidson tee-shirts that state with a certain, cheeky menace to "put your ass on some class?" Where are the creepy reproduction Victorian dolls and the little calico outfits for the manatee that holds your mailbox? I've been to flea markets, believe me--I've even gone to my share of French flea markets, and all those vendors of perfume imitations, Sophisti-twist hair gadgets, cheap tube socks, cracked vinyl purses and curled shoes interestingly never make it into the photos.

Still, just because something's old doesn't necessarily make it an antique, and a spindly table with scruffy paint won't make your home "shabby chic." Sometimes old stuff is just old and shabby. Minus the chic. And face it: most of us don't live in that four story, Belle Epoch-era apartment in Paris' 2nd Arrondissement with the floor to ceiling casement windows, or the 1957 California modern original; we live in some 20th century apartment or tract house with double glazing and flimsy hollow core doors. We bring that slouchy armchair into our 1961 ranch style home and cover it with a white sheet and it looks like we're hiding something, which, of course, we are. It sits there slouching and leaking stuffing like some slobbering, urine-soaked drunk we brought home and propped in the corner. The frilly vanity with the girlish mirror turns out to be a rickety Ethan Allen repro with peeling veneer held on sheerly by the viscous strength of thick layers of sickly yellow paint and daubed on stencils.

Look--it can be done. You've got to find high quality: good construction, good finish. You've got to think about where it's going: shiny spandex bicycle shorts if you have a huge ass isn't going to work any better than the big, dark walnut sideboard with the carved boars' heads in your 1967 tract house in St. Pete with the 8' ceilings. You've got to keep it clean and simple--dirty, cluttered, and overdone is always going to look bad. There needs to be some other saving grace: sentimental value, quirky knobs, the outline of the Virgin Mary in the grain of the wood, whatever. Shabby and chic are all very well and good, but it all has to fit. It has to work with the bones: your bones; the bones of your house. Otherwise, it's just old rags and second hand crap.

golf clubs of the dead and the voodoo bowl

2009-08-26T11:33:00.001-07:00

No, there's nothing very old here in Florida. And yes, it drives me nuts. When I moved here in 1993, it felt like moving to the bottom of the universe--the far flung place where nothing happened--the place where people came to get away from places where stuff happened. It took me years to look at it a slightly different perspective. In fact, it is the top of an entirely different universe--the quiet apex of the Caribbean, the top wisp of South American continent, rather than the dragging, soggy tail of the Northern one. Turning to this different point of view, Ecuador is closer than Ames, Iowa, and Lake Titicaca is no more remote and exotic than Lake Superior. It is cheaper and easier for me to travel to places that previously seemed outrageously beyond: Colombia, Trinidad, Lima--than to Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford.

And, in fact, geologically speaking, Florida truly is the New World, having really only just raised itself out of the water a few relative moments ago by the sheer industry of billions and trillions of little creatures toiling away on their little microscopic bits of real estate before moving out--maybe in disgust.

It's the true tabula rasa--even the dirt is white. So nearly everything has been imported and transplanted--even the silent and admirably truculent Seminoles are transplants from somewhere where things were happening that they wanted to get away from. People who have worked their whole lives to get their own little slice of Paradise bring their fantasies of starting over: white carpets and pastel couches--no more of that fusty, dark wood furniture, no more dark wool! I want brass chrome plating, pink Orlon and turquoise vertical blinds to match!

They come, they decorate, they die. The kids come and clear out the condo--all the heirlooms have been divided up years ago--now, the most valuable thing left is the empty space and new paint. The rest is one sad estate sale and a drive-by to the Goodwill.

And while it's true that the resultant jackstraw pile of unremarkable golf clubs aren't particularly odd at first glance, on second thought, my god-- there are just so damn many of them! Those golf clubs represent a mind-bogglingly vast graveyard of dashed hopes, cruel shanks, and out-and-out lies. My sister dubbed these "The Golf Clubs of The Dead," a veritable Elysian field of second hand sports equipment for an overpriced sport. But there was also "Bridal Wear of the Bitter;" and its begrudging relation "Mother-of-the-Bride-Shoes of the Dead," "Florist Vases of the Dead," and "Dead Men's Clothes."

Seen in that light, even the most common object takes on a mysterious weirdness: the entire section set aside for the dozen or so portable toilets, the kind Medicare pays for when you leave the rehab center to go home to die; the groaning racks of overwrought, shapeless glittering beaded gowns, whose awful cut and sheer weight is outdone by their general hideousness--a visual testament to hundreds of cruises and the hope to cover up and weigh down the bariatric effects of the midnight buffet with pounds of dazzling, glass beads sewn in dizzying, disorienting patterns. Some woman in a slum of Beijing went blind sewing those fiddly bugle beads and tiny, iridescent seed beads; did she go home shaking her head and wondering what the hell it all was for?

But then, there's the flotsam and jetsam of the general disposable weirdness of the American melting pot. But South Florida isn't just a warm little fondue of American retirees, wiry, ATV riding crackers, European investors and Caribbean and South American Classists escaping belligerent Marxist regimes. It is a pressure cooker--4 billion pounds of different meats, crammed into a 1 million pound Lily Pulitzer-colored pot and set to broil on high heat. If you can keep things stewing at just the right temperature with just the right ingredients, everything comes out tender and tasty--if a little mushy.

The jetsam becomes just so much discarded driftwood and foamy surf, lying as it often does amongst the jumbled piles of aluminum cookware and rustic, wooden signs that read, "Laugh, Dream, Love." Tiny gold-plated coke spoons chucked in with the children's toys; the entire wardrobe of feathery, be-sequined ballgowns and custom-made leopard print salsa dresses in size 18; seven pairs of hard-worn lederhosen; a silver-inlaid, butt-shined parade saddle the size of a sofa; souvenir machetes; burnt out santos candles; bright blue mariachi jackets that looked to be stained with what one hopes was red wine.

Some years ago, I found a curious bowl amongst the other household geegaws. I still remember it--a brittle, ivory-colored thing, curiously light and thin--pocked and fissured. I felt its wrongness, even with the cheerful, multicolored plastic skulls that had been hot-glued onto the base as crude feet. It was a human skull, sawn at the crown. Scratched with a fingernail, it smelled of burnt hair and char and plain bad mojo. It's place there completely mystifying--did the witch doctors have too many skull bowls cluttering up the place? A cumulative case of the heebie jeebies? It was inherently a dark and awful thing, but I couldn't help wondering--if you put 10 cents on a tee shirt at a garage sale, Haitians will haggle you down to 7 cents. But this bowl made of someone's head was simply chucked into the giveaway pile? Weird...

I didn't buy it. But neither have I ever felt right about leaving it there amongst the Corningware and old coffee makers. I often wonder if some Marilyn Manson wannabe Devil-worshiper got himself the real McCoy for his unhappy, ridiculous, black-lit garage-goth rituals.

I'd hate it if he did. It was marked 99 cents.

2009-08-26T10:38:00.001-07:00

It's no secret that I hate living in Florida. I hate the sand and the heat and the weird, plasticky texture of the grass that reminds me of those welcome mats with the little daisy in the upper right hand corner. I hate mowing the lawn on Christmas Eve. And above all, I hate that, with the exception of a few fairly impressive shell mounds piled up from Calusa clambakes, there's nothing very old here at all.

An "older home," is a Florida real estate-y term applied to any dwelling that was built before 1999. I say, as a general rule--with the exception of tents--no one should ever use the term "older home" if the residents are older than the home.

New buildings are made to look old here: Spanish colonial villas; Italian Mediterranean pallazzos and French provincial chateaux; Florida cracker-style stripmalls; Queen Ann style beach cottages done up with more lace and rick-rack than a maiden great auntie. But there's something amiss in these nostalgic architectural bulwarks. They have been designed from the inside out, ballooning those soft proportions exponentially--21st century materials have thinned walls and thickened windows, pushed open span distances and shrunk interstitial spaces. If a 12-foot ceiling is impressive than a 20-foot ceiling must be even more impressive!! The envelope balloons outward, making the charming American dream of a beach cottage into a monstrosity--a cute thing blown up to freakish proportions with unblinking, double-glazed eyes and thin stucco skin that ages gracelessly, chipping off its metal lath, mouldering and rusting in the hardwater spray of the lawn sprinklers.

The new residents' old furniture--proportioned for older ceiling-heights and smaller butts, perhaps--suddenly looks like doll's furniture in these cavernous spaces; a shriveled peanut rattling around in the giant pumpkin shell. So the furniture follows, bloating into proportions that must be filled with vast poly-filled cushions, bed pillows stacked 3 and 4 layers high, elephantine dining furniture fit for some fascist baronial fortress. I am not a small woman and yet, sinking into these sofas is a comical sight, my legs sticking out, and my head lolling back on the cushions like Edith Ann on a bender.

Maybe it's because of the second home culture that permeated Florida: the taking of the "second bests" to the beach, the buying of the cheap and disposable for the three month romp in the sun and surf.

Then: Haul it out, tear down the old house, build it bigger, buy new. The sand is raw for a few months and then they unroll the sod in neat little strips like carpet, poke a few palm trees in the ground, water the shit out of it, and you'll be damned if you can remember what was there before. And there at the consignment shops and the thrift stores is where the memory winds up:
--the new, overstuffed bullies go toe-to-toe with the dainty little couches as prim as a buttoned shoe. And neither is improved by the comparison.

2009-08-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

These are lean days in the thrift stores. To everything there is a season and that goes for the ebb and flow of crap, too.

In my old hometown, early summer was the time to reap, and May presented the richest pickings--when the exodus of university students cleaned out their dorm rooms and ratty rentals and the weather became agreeable to garage sales and estate auctions. Summer Thursday nights, my mother would start to plan her garage sale attack plans, marking the newspapers with esoteric symbols that ranked the sales according to location and prioritized them by time and the secret language of the classified ads. She and her best friend would head off at dawn, stocked up on smokes and stoked up on McDonald's coffee and sausage biscuits. Going with them was an all day commitment that required fortitude, stamina and a tolerance for air that resembled the dense fug of a BINGO parlor.

Here in this fantasy land of Florida, May is still high tide--an influx of castoffs from seasonal residents heading back to their northern homes: sorting, cleaning, packing, in the throes of a final cocktail binge. In the city proper, it's a hassle getting a permit for a garage sale and frankly, those with the best stuff probably can't be bothered with any of that. And, after all, most of us have come to realize that most of us would rather have an IRS tax audit than haggle with Haitians over a quarter. So it's a quick drive-by at the thriftstore that supports the charity or medical research of your choice: Alzheimers, Right To Life, Abused Women, Abused Pets, Drug Abuse, the hospital, the humane society, the good cause you never considered. It's a veritable glut of goodstuff! Slowly, it gets pawed over and picked through, til nothing remains but tired, glittery tee shirts and Estee Lauder gift bags into the dog days of August.

September-November, furniture and other large goods washing up in consignment stores mark the decorators' deadlines and model-homebuilders housecleaning: last, frantic touches and switches to seasonal renovations before the homeowners' return in January; put on your catchers' mitts, 'cause there's a lot of money being thrown around.

Through season, the supply is pretty steady, but the competition skews the prices. Bored snowbirds and "shabby chic" decorators, giddy at finding used crap at barely 50% off retail can barely contain themselves in the checkout lines. You can see the wheels turning behind the register--"we could have asked more!"

Used Shoes

2009-07-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 25, 2009

I've been away from writing--having second thoughts about my abilities as a writer of anything more than magazine articles and press releases. And I've been occupied by a brief moment of heart-rending wrestling with an old friend who wanted a second go round. In the middle of something like that, sometimes it's difficult to remember the difference between what you want and what you want right now. That all this second hand shopping and second thoughts are actually the ends to a means and not the ends themselves. That is, find things of quality that no one else sees; turn it into something uniquely your own; sell dear. Still it's hard to let things go, even when you know you should.

I found a pair of Prada shoes at one of the higher end thrift stores yesterday--the kind of thrift store where wives of retired executives volunteer because it's clean and in a good location and because it benefits abused women--to whom, I suppose, many of these volunteers can relate without actually having to, you know, relate to them. There are more volunteers in the store sometimes than customers. They're perpetually straightening the tidy racks and talking about where they're going to meet for lunch. The prices are generally pretty high and even higher on what they label their "boutique" donations. If you mention that Ralph Lauren and Liz Claiborne aren't really "designer" clothing, they'll get a little huffy. They'll tell you 'well, it's still cheaper than retail,' and if that doesn't clinch the sale then they'll add with a caring shrug and open palms, 'it's for a good cause.'

And I'll always mutter, yes, but it's still used clothing.

Sometimes they'll have a sale on "boutique" items--always 'excluding gray and white tags,' meaning the upper end designers: Chanel, St. John, Gucci and the upper end of designer lines. (Can someone explain the cultish appeal of St. John knits???) The volunteers generally don't let anything slip through their bead the way a good Michael Kors skirt or Kate Spade bag will sometimes slip past the apathetic Goodwill staff or the St. Vincent volunteers.

But the Prada shoes had been worn. Often times, the items in the 'Gray and White Tag' section are so lightly worn or so virtually unworn that a girl can grant them these high, inflexible prices for one night of an anorexic frame tottering through thick wool carpet at a cocktail benefit. It's not difficult to picture staggering shop-a-holic women, post-shopping binge, groggily taking vast stacks of Blahnik shoes they'd bought in multiples and loud LaCroix blouses that seemed ironic and edgy at the time they'd handed over their American Express Black Card, but they'd just never found an equally loud and ironic occasion or the right point in their bulimic cycle to be worn. And so with the balm of a tax write-off to soothe their buyer's remorse, they haul in their guilt still fluttering with retail tags, or the drycleaner's hangers.

But the Prada shoes had obviously been around a block a few times. Not a nasty block with cheap whores and broken beer bottles and crumbling concrete--a nice block with boutiques and blue chip art galleries and sleek restaurants with lots of minimalist stainless and expensive whores, maybe--but they'd been around it at least twice. They were black canvas slingbacks with a 6 inch heel and a 1 inch platform sole. I admired the way they made my legs look about 3 miles long, enjoyed the way I towered over the omnipresent volunteer trying to look busy with the little shrine of St. John Knits.

I asked for a price on the shoes. I pointed out how worn they were. The volunteer took them to the back where the price volunteer sat enthroned. I waited. I scanned some racks of men's shirts There were about 8 or 9 tuxedo shirts--all size 48, as if some obese concert cellist had just lost an important gig and just said 'to Hell with it,' and gone into selling real estate. I stuck one leg into a pair of men's equestrian field boots that came to mid-thigh. The boots had been there for months--an over-specialized item, for an overly-special man who, in addition to having a horse, must also be well over 6 and a half feet tall. How often does a 6 and a half-foot giant stroll into this thrift store desperate for a discount pair of hunt boots? I thought. Had these women been drinking?

I flipped through a rack of cashmere trenches and castoff fur coats that follow their owners to Florida--with the hope that they'll do some winter shopping trip to Manhattan or Chicago, and end in hopeless donation. Overpriced. Finally, I stuck my head into the price maven's lair: her head was bent over the shoes, wiping the signs of wear from the soles with an oiled cloth.

"What are you asking for them?" I asked. I knew I sounded impatient, snotty.

"Well, you know these are PRADA shoes and..."

"I KNOW what they are. I can read." I rolled my eyes--it's an impatient habit; I'm not proud of it. "How much?"

"$30.00--but you know they're Gray and White tag, so..." She was still wiping.

"Yes, yes. Fine." I made a quick judgment; it was high, but not outrageous and I'd acted too uppity to back off just then. I was feeling reckless. "Fine. Quit the wiping. I'll take them." I hooked my fingers carelessly into the slingback straps and turned on my heel. "They may be Prada," I shot over my shoulder. "But in the end, they're still just used shoes."

I knew as the door closed behind me how they shook their heads at my bitchiness, their bony elbows resting on the counter, the line of customers just thrilled to find Talbot's 2006 clothes at barely 40% retail, or exclaiming that new, those shoes would cost at least $350.00! Maybe there was one other woman there that knew sometimes buying shoes for $350.00 isn't ever an option for some of us who still like good material, a good cut, a quality finish. That's why we watch and wait for other women to wear them, then tire of them and finally throw them away. Snatch them from the refuse for a second chance.

My friend and I had known each other in our early 20's--when bodies seem indestructible and breasts still have magical powers, and you claim to think it's all in fun, but you know that you're going to get an emotional ass kicking. Somewhere down the line, there's husbands and family and dog vomit and compromises and dull cars, so you go a little wild and hope for the best.

He was handsome and athletic. I was not. But I had big boobs and great legs and I could carve out the rest from an arrogant bitchiness and a shocking recklessness. My family was suspicious of him, told me he was out of my league, which of course, he was. Even I knew that. Handsome men occasionally find themselves fascinated by a woman who is not beautiful. Intelligent, handsome men fall into that fascination legitimately--a little embarrassed and baffled by how their eyes and brains and penis refuse to agree on anything. Handsome men who wish to be taken for more intelligent than they are, work very hard to fall into love with an unbeautiful woman, hoping that other people will think he's deeper than he appears, and have a sort of reflected depth by the comparison. "Him and her? I don't see it. There must be something only he can see--why can't we all look below the skin? What is wrong with us??"

But all handsome men are a luxury to afford; and just so expensive to keep--not in terms of dollars and cents the way beautiful women must be kept in material luxuries, but in the effort to stay fascinating and the doubt that one can remain fascinating enough forever. Eventually, there comes a day when every girl just wants to eat macaroni and cheese and read Twilight novels.

I can't speak for him. I did not trust whatever he said anyway. His life read like fiction, a series of hilarious adventures of the kind that handsome men can charm their way through, circles they might not have access to without the looks. But even trading on the boobs and legs and that strange chemistry that people put too high a price on, I knew he was waaay out of my price range: orthodontically perfect, muscularly so self-sure and a bit selfish. And so, when he turned hard and cold the next autumn, there wasn't much I could do but write about him. The next spring of course, he married some beautiful woman and disappeared back into his fictional life and I into mine, and it didn't matter, except as a source of fiction.

I found him on Facebook, of all places, that second-hand window shopping ground for old college boyfriends and ex- cheerleading skanks that made your life miserable in high school. In a series of funny and sad messages, he filled me in on the backstory of the 18 years since he stalked out of my life. And I confess, I'm thoroughly enjoying the story.

Mid-life, there's evidence of wear and tear: a simmering anger under the laughing surface, a checkerboard of new scars and a few caps to replace those sugar-cube teeth knocked out in accidents and brawls. His price has come down a bit, but the quality structure is still intact: the impatient virility, the boyish, hungry heart, the lightning-quick sense of humor.

But I suspect his young girlfriend is starting to examine all of it--reassess her priorities the way we do when we cull through our closets at each period of weight loss or our career--pitching out the things that seemed funny and colorful and ironic when we brought them home 10 years ago, but then never quite fit right, or never matched any of our shoes or simply don't portray the woman we think we are now.

Apparently, she hasn't decided on whether to get rid of him--the aging thoroughbred going to auction: all scarred hide and torn ligaments, but still pawing the turf, tough and restless. He's obviously been around the block a few times, but then, she's barely 30 and can't have been around that much at all. But she's still undecided, fighting to make him fit somehow, maybe debating on having some alterations done, or something dyed to match.

Of course, I didn't really need the Prada shoes. I already have scads of black heels: kitten-heeled Coach mules, black animal print pumps, Carole Little peep-toe platforms, Miu-Miu patent leather wedges, sparkly sandals, vintage Joan and David satin slippers, a frilly, girly pair of ribbony stillettoes, and cruel, suede Italian fetish shoes that I found in a pile of S&M leather at a garage sale in San Francisco. I don't usually pay that much for shoes--even Prada. I'll wear the shoes I usually do: the flip-flops and the Keene maryjanes or the new Adidas trainers that can keep up with my little boys and slip on when I run to the post office or teach my aerobics classes. But I loved those absurd, towering heels: impulsive, reckless love.

Doesn't mean I'll ever wear them. But I do love them.

Withdrawal Symptoms

2009-06-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to the thrift stores in a while. I reached a saturation point, perhaps, with the pilled sweaters and the dull black shirts and tangled piles of crap. Some of that stuff didn't deserve a first chance--it was bought carelessly, thoughtlessly, and chucked out with as much care and thought--ugly dresses, grotesque knickknacks, vapid wooden signs that say "Love isn't the destination, it's what makes the journey worthwhile." I'm suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff that people cast off; the mass of things that they simply couldn't stand to have around another minute.

I don't miss it, particularly. Once the habit of it all wanes, I'm kind of the out-of-sight-out-of-mind school of thought when it comes to missing things. But remind me of something and all the missing comes right back

costume process-cut and paste

2009-06-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I learned to sew the way some boys used to learn how to build car engines or repair bikes--by taking junk apart to see how it was made. Or, more accurately, hacking it to pieces and then nipping and tucking it into something else.

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This dress was one of those Franken-costumes: a turtleneck maxi dress re-cut and trimmed with marabou salvaged from a dejected negligee in a Salvation Army reject pile--a little office number for Li'l Abner's Appassionata von Climax. I'd attached a bustle train with rooster tail feathers on the back and then loaned it to a broad-shouldered boyfriend for a drag gag and the bustle came back looking as though had been in a cockfight.

Finally, I retrofitted the backside with this saucy little peplum flounce made of unopened bills for a Hell-themed costume party. This was its last appearance. One shift of dancing in a go-go cage and the whole envelope went to hell. Student loan statements, old telephone bills, and insurance invoices fluttered down on the revelers below.

I was much gratified to see that my art camp students totally got the suit project.

The Seven Suits of St. Vincent

2009-06-12T12:02:00.001-07:00

My younger son's teachers have all taken me aside at one point and another to tell me that I need to encourage his precocious artistic talent. My deadpan reply to them is to say that we, as professional educators and parents need to work together to nip that precocious talent in the bud! They would consign a child to a lifetime of squatting in grotty apartments, weeks of Ramen noodle rations, and telemarketing to pay for it? What kind of monsters are they??? (Monsters with dental, that's what kind!)

It doesn't necessarily get me upset when they lament cutbacks in the arts in schools. I say we take a few moments of science and consider letting the arts fall where they may. I say why not wheedle in a little lesson in scientific illustration while dissecting that frog or talk about the mathematics of the golden mean? But people say that's just me, which is to say, a heretic, worthy of burning.

Well, anyway, I caved and signed the kid up for Art Camp. I would have anyway. I think.

But the local summer art program is expensive. So I had to do what all artists do when they want something expensive: they trade on the equity of their very souls. (Eventually, many artists over-extend their credit, leading to an artistic mortgage crisis later in life.) So, my son's artistic talent will be encouraged for the price of my teaching 7 'tweens and teenagers the fabulously fun and oh-so potentially lucrative possibilities of costume design for one week.

Last summer, I had each student bring in a garment of their own to which, as I said in the brochure, we would do artsy-sounding things like "de-construct" and "manipulate using a variety of techniques." The kids were a not a little confused by the project. They had no interest in drawing and most had never touched a needle and thread, nor did they want to really.

This summer, I've bought 7 men's suits from St. Vincent de Paul thrift store for 7 bucks each: dark blue, navy pinstripe, gray jackets and pants. Each student will have a suit to work with. Using a variety of techniques, students will manipulate the pieces through reduction (cutting it up), adding on (putting in gussets, flares, extensions) or embellishment (beading, embroidery, paint). For the student show, I thought a tableaux vivant of The Seven Suits of St. Vincent would have a visual impact.

Magic Carpet

2009-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

This is about a rug I bought at the Goodwill. It was 12 bucks. Very clean. But the story is worth way more.

In 1988, Susan Begley and I traveled to Greece the way most college students travel abroad: that is to say, very scruffily. We'd boarded the train in Budapest with an apple struedel under each arm and a bottle each of something dreadful that we picked up at the local Cheerless-Eastern European-Booze Booth. We rationed the alcohol by getting on already buzzed and slept with our heads resting on the struedels.

"Wake up, Americans! Wake up, Canada!" the train conductor slapped our heads with his billets. He cheerfully hustled us onto the platforms with 12 or 13 other staggering passengers: Australians, Canadians, two really pissed off-looking German girls and us. They took our passports and disappeared into the warm station house while we stood there, lined up execution style, bleary-eyed, scuzzy mouthed, and shivering without the presence of mind to think there was anything else to do but just that. The German girls spat disgusted comments to each other about stupidity and fucking hillbillies (my translation), but when they were given their passports back, they thanked the fucking hillbillies and climbed back into their nice, warm cochette without hesitation. When the train started moving again, they hustled us back on at a trot. We hugged our struedels and fell into the dull, swaying sleep of never quite getting your neck straight or your feet warm; the sleep of college students on a budget. We wondered for a while if the whole passport thing had just been part of the uncomfortable dream. But it was 1987 and it was still Yugoslavia.

We changed trains in Beograd, a frantic hustling through a bright, cold train yard--neglected-looking Soviet-era cars going to Russia and mustached women in black babushkas actually carrying massive bundles of actual sticks on their actual hunched backs. Wasn't that enough--so why do I remember cattle?

We were helped onto the right train through a window. There were no available seats in the compartments, so we huddled on our bags in the aisle with the wiry men and shared their acrid cigarettes and passing out apple strudel and swigs from bottles. It was stifling in a matter of hours, even the smoke had nowhere else to go. I started to open a window but a man beside me indicated that this would be a bad idea. He absolutely insisted. A few moments later, a thin stream of liquid slashed the panes. Further up the car, a man was pissing through an open window. By that time, however, I was past disgustable. I was sure I didn't smell that great myself and if I could have, I would have pissed out the window than squat over that rickety hole of a toilet. Somebody passed another bottle around. The sure-fire international language and social lubricant: cheap cigarettes and rotgut booze.

Passing that border, the train's passengers got younger, blonder, drunker. Young Scandinavian holidaymakers, and the Aussies, Canadians, and the American walkabouts heading into Athens made a sort of slow, giddy boil of 20-something indestructibility and pheromone-ridden b.o.

Oh, we did all the things young architecture students are supposed to do: climb the Acropolis, visit the Agora, buy souvlaki and rough leather goods. I bought a pair of gladiator sandals and a greasy wool rug, a brilliant blue with a Greek key design that smelled of sheep and the heat of midday. It cost maybe the equivalent of 35 bucks, which was a lot at the time. I justified the Drachmas by thinking I'd give it to my boyfriend when I got back to the States.

We took the ferry to the islands, allotting two or three days each for Mykonos, San Turini and somewhere else, though I can't remember which one. We never left Mykonos. I slept under that rug in our spare hotel room, and sat on it on the cold, gray, deserted beach on the other side of the island.

We almost didn't leave Mykonos at all. Scandinavian tourists took us for coffee, beautiful blond lesbians bought us drinks, restaurant owners fed us like stray cats. We fell in with some handsome Greek boys who promised us jobs and lodging and dancing and very hot sex. On the beach on a blue rug, probably. A veritable tourist trap.

But we did leave. Lots of backward glances and second thoughts. We huddled under the rug on the deck of the ferry to Brindisi; ate picnic lunch on it on our watercolor tour of Tuscany. I left it in the rental car in Rome with my camera and within minutes, both were gone. It was a second-hand camera that my mother had given me--a crap, 35 mm Brownie basically. I hadn't taken many pictures anyway. I didn't miss it. But the rug! Boy, was I PISSED about the rug!

So, last week, I found this rug in a pile of grubby pastel dhurries and stained acrylic area rugs--brilliant Mediterranean blue with a Greek key design. No price tag. The apathetic clerk waved her hand and said "eh...12 bucks."

I wondered, as I carried it through the store, if it was worth the 12 bucks.

"Remember that rug I said I bought you in Athens, and then it got stolen in Rome?" I asked my husband before I took it out of the back of the car.

"Sort of," he answered.

"Well, I found it."

"Huh. This is what it looked like?"

I unrolled it on my sons' bedroom floor. The older one is 10 now and has rejected the little wool tufted one that looks like a little island that I bought new at Pottery barn when he was a baby. I like to go in there to play Legos with them. I prop myself up on my elbows on the itchy wool in the sunny spot and smell the sheep grease and heat.

2009-06-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

I guess I can get a little tetchy about the second hand thing. On the one hand, there's a peculiar pride in being able to spot a Stella McCartney cashmere coat at 20 paces or an authentic Dooney and Bourke purse hanging with the pile of Clinique gift bags and Chinese knockoffs. And on the other, there's a sort of nervous embarrassment about stopping the car near a curb to toss some intriguing lawn furniture into the trunk and discovering that there are people still using it.

But a lifetime of being the butt of family jokes from the aunts and cousins...yes...ho. ho...hmmm. Gets a little old and tired--and that goes for the cracks about hand-me-downs, too--we're Catholics, for chrissakes! I think hand-me-downs are part of the catechism, aren't they? After all, all of my mother's sisters and brothers had a bent toward collecting--junk cars, old church statuary, canned foods, dusty stacks of cash--but our house: that was something of a showcase. Friends and relatives would come to visit and there would be a frantic flurry of activity to stash a couple boxes in my brother's room, a shuttle run of things into the barn, and a quick couple flushes of the toilet for good measure.

Let me go on the record right now: it is not genetic. We're all just one pair $800 Christian LaBoutin shoes or a 99-cent jackalope away from the same problem. You, me, the overweening, Dwell-Magazine-reading minimalist with the uncomfortable linen sofa and nowhere to store his mail. You can't tell me that that guy doesn't get piles somewhere.

So, really, it all boils down to pile management.

I gave up shopping for Lent this year. It was Ash Wednesday and I had a big deadline on Thursday. I can remember this because I don't have that many deadlines right now, so they tend to stand out. Instead of being at home writing, I was at the Goodwill. (In case you're wondering, I found a nice, silver-framed beveled mirror and a nice pair of silk Tommy Bahama drawstring pants.) But--and this is important--I didn't buy them.

I went home and attacked the pile on my desk, which included that article on a "minimalist" architect who has three "weekend" homes, and who didn't get the irony. Then, when I hit send and cleared the desktop, I went on a driveby boxing, which is just going around the house and pitching things into a box: ugly shoes, tired tee shirts, the mysteriously reappearing hardbound copy of The DaVinci Code that everyone thinks I'm going to like and I keep throwing out because I wouldn't use it as toilet paper. (I once hosted a good, old-fashioned book burning to which I consigned one of these recurring copies of The DaVinci Code but that's another story).

I threw out my sons' artwork. Yep. Big, honkin' stacks of it. I threw out piles of pants with bad butt fit and stacks of skirts that seemed funny and ironic at the time but were really just odd and loud. I pitched unattractive family snapshots and ugly stuffed animals, or any stuffed animals that gave me a dirty look. I chucked attractive things, too--Donna Karan pants that were nipped just a tad too tight in the waist; a cute little teapot that was short and stout, but when you tipped it over...it just made a big, freaking mess. I tossed Armani sandals and pretty Christmas cards sent by distant loved ones that I finally admitted I was never going to turn into charming origami tree ornaments.

Oh, I had my "Come-to-Oprah" moments--the twinges of uncertainty, a "I-might-need-this-for-something-later" justifications. And that's when you know: if it hurts, it's got to go.

Some of it, I set out by the curb, where neighbors made off with chairs and baby equipment. The rest I left on the doorstep of the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and ran away without asking for a receipt. I don't often shop at St. V.deP. Don't shit in your own nest, is how my mom might have put that strategy. But recently, I saw a woman wearing a great pair of suspiciously familiar vintage Armani sandals.

They looked really good on her.

I kind of wanted 'em back.

2009-06-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

Found about six or seven frilly hostess aprons at the Goodwill. Frilly organdy and whimsical printed cotton. Useless things. But there were so many of them! Were they owned by some now-dead, perfect hostess of the 50's with one for every outfit? Were they made by some ironic, pin-up wannabee with an apron fetish? Were they for a group? Or did each come individually and all wind up together in some incredible coincidence?

I couldn't justify buying the entire lot but I couldn't leave them, either. Now, I feel terrible about breaking up the collection. Should I go back and buy the rest?

This era of wash and wear precludes much need of apron wear. After all, it takes probably less energy and water to launder a tee shirt than to wash and iron one of these little numbers, but could there be a Renaissance of the Hostess Apron?

2009-06-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

www.naplesnews.com/photos/galleries/2009/jun/06/taking-frugal-approach-home/

2009-06-05T14:55:00.001-07:00

My friend and sometime boss, but mostly my friend now after all these years, Kathy Becker, editor of Naples Illustrated magazine, put me to an interesting test of my second hand, vintage clothes finding skills. She wants vintage Oscar de la Renta for a garden party, size 8 on top, size 14 on the bottom. I'm thinking I might just go for the full monty and find the hat and gloves.

I have often said, give me the Yellow Pages and some mild curiosity and I could find Osama bin Laden. AND he'd be wearing vintage de la Renta and LIKING it.

The easiest route would be vintage clothing dealers. It's funny, though about those because they tend to get all precious about them. But they're still just, you know, used clothes. I suppose there's someone out there who can really do crafty-decorate-y things with an old prom dress and a hot glue gun. I ain't that kind of girl. If the sweat stains and dry rotted seams won't let me wear it to the annual polo fundraiser, I don't know what else to do with it.

I do buy cashmere sweaters whenever I find them at thrift stores and cut them up. I have half of one of those recycled sweater quilts and just huge fluffy piles of boiled cashmere (it doesn't really boil well--it stays soft and fluffy no matter how long you boil it--that was interesting to find out). sorted into color groups, but that's as far as I'll go.

Next would be ebay. I'm off!

2009-06-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

2009-06-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

Found a new pair of Donald J. Pliner red suede wedge pumps at the Goodwill. They were $15.99, which is a bit much for the GW, but they were new and surprisingly comfortable for having a 6-inch heel. And, you know, anything for the red shoes.

I put them in the red section of my shoe collection with my Coach patent leather red pumps, the red pebble grain Lauren slides, the red Keene maryjanes, a non-descript but utilitarian pair of ballet flats, and the red suede boots that I've only gotten to wear a handful of times. Women don't like to part with their red shoes. Red shoes don't age well, they fade, they scuff, they oxidize. The red needs to be pristine, uncreased, danced in once and put away. Like the perfect shade of red lipstick, they must be flawless in order to not look trashy or tired. Red gets tired fast. The color, not the idea of red.

And, really, what is it with the red shoes?

Second Hand Thoughts

2009-06-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

I am now a middle-aged mother of two young boys, living on a suburban street in southwest Florida. I drive a Toyota SUV, which has been thrown up in so many times, I gag at the thought of it. I work as a fitness instructor, a Weight Watchers leader, and a presently under-employed freelance writer. I've had worse jobs. But Nature abhorrs a vacuum. I am now a blogger.

And I'm having second thoughts.

Oh, not about blogging. I've been thinking about that for a while since magazine work sort of dried up and I'm looking for a new literary agent and have eaten everything in the house.

Just second thoughts. You know: first impressions, second thoughts, third and fourth chances.

My mother was an antique dealer. Or a picker. Or a collector. Or just a hoarder, maybe. She used to go to garage sales, thrift stores and auctions and buy antiques for her antique store. Then, she went to garage sales, thrift stores and auctions to buy stuff that went to her friends' antique stores. Then, she just went to garage sales, thrift stores and auctions to buy stuff that never went anywhere at all. It piled up in great stacks of oriental carpets and paintings, and piles of antique linens and lace; it piled into barrels of teddy bears and creepy dolls and clown figurines; dollhouses, doorknobs, and dhurries. She had a houseful of antique chairs, miniature sofas, vinyl massage chairs, but there was never a place to sit down. She had canopy beds, artist crafted four-poster beds, antique cannonball beds, girly iron beds, and never anywhere to sleep.

I'm sure I'll wax nostalgic about all that later.

My point, if I ever had one, is that I knew I had to be very, very careful and vigilant about thrift stores. I didn't particularly like them. Didn't like the universal smell of thriftstore stuff: B.O. and mildew and cheap fabric sizing. I thought I'd rather live in an empty room than go to a garage sale for a chair. Which, actually is what happened: me, a series of crummy apartments where I couldn't afford the rent, and one crappy, motheaten oriental carpet that my mother begrudgingly parted with so I wouldn't have to sleep on the floor.

I started going to thrift stores while I was working as a theater designer in Chicago: The Brown Elephant in the gay ghetto on the north side in Wrigleyville. Good clothes, excellent furniture, an easy shop, for a girl with my upbringing and education. And then, one afternoon, I ran across this veritable trove of the most awesome shoes: dozens and dozens of trashy platforms, maribou mules, silver ballroom shoes, conservative suede pumps, spectators, peep-toe starlet slingbacks, a rainbow of dyed bridesmaid's shoes, strappy sandals, thigh high boots. All in size 13 women's. Row after row of acrylic heeled wedges, gold gladiators, patent leather stilettos. It took me a moment to process the woman with the size 13 feet. But of course: A drag queen's royal hoard.

But why had they come here? Who had brought them? Where were the outfits that went with them???

Now, according to the newspaper writer friend of mine wrote about thriftstore chic decorating, I am the Dumpster Diva. I've been down a few of those, too, mind you, but I told her if she referred to me in the article that way, I wouldn't give her the great Michael Kors skirt I found in her size at the Domestic Violence thriftstore. The thing with thriftstores is a good eye and constant vigilance.

I am, I suppose,
Artemis--the Huntress