I’m visiting my family and friends in Ohio until
I’m going to get so many presents, eat so many of those sugar cookies with the Hershey’s Kisses pressed into the tops of them, and do so many gay things with my best friend.
Like so:
I’ll miss you, blogfriends!
I think I have split personalities. At least when it comes to my personal style.
See, most of me likes kid stuff. I’m super-nostalgic and get a lot of joy from surrounding myself with toys and games that remind me of my childhood. I grew up wearing clothes other people described as “funky”: tacky plastic rings as big as my fist, polyester bowling shirts, patent leather sneakers, corduroy pants when tight-rolled jeans were cool. I’ve grown up a little since then, but I still like weird t-shirts, earrings made out of Barbie shoes, my bedspread covered in giant jewel-toned polka-dots, and my record player that looks like the hood of a 1950s car.
But a little part of me likes beautiful things, too. The brown brocade curtains my roommate and I picked out for our apartment, the vintage mink stole Kamran bought me two Christmases ago, lace dresses worn with crinolines, pearls and pearls and pearls. Part of me yearns to be someone people would describe as “put together”. But I’m too scared of being generic to shop for sweater sets and riding boots.
I reconcile these two sides of myself by buying frilly party dresses from little girl stores like Forever 21 and ModCloth, but I remain torn. When I go to all of these nice restaurants with Kamran, I feel underdressed in even my poufiest taffeta number. But when I’m out on a Friday night in Williamsburg or the Lower East Side, I feel overdressed in my satin-trimmed “Real Housewives of Orange County”-looking shirts. When I see older women on the bus trying to look like Betsey Johnson, though, it just seems so pathetic. I don’t want to still be wearing teenager jeans when I’m 50.
I want to look like the kind of girl who lives in NYC, dates a lawyer with a Ph.D., and goes to all of the best restaurants but can still hang out at a $10 rock show in the back of some ugly bar. Does that have to involve leather pants and six-inch stiletos? If so, I’m clearly a failure, because I tried to buy expensive-looking jewelry from Etsy for myself yesterday and ended up adding this to my cart:
Can my “personal style” be a mix of polar opposite things?
Thinking about going home to Ohio in a couple of days for Christmas has me really craving the kind of fair food I can only get at the yearly pumpkin festival in the town next to mine.
Is it wrong that I evidently associate my hometown with deep-frying?
It’s just an accident that my work slippers match my tights today.
But it sure is a happy accident.
Recently, Kamran and I were watching a nerdy “NOVA” special about the monarch butterfly’s migration from Canada to Mexico. Apparently they travel through the U.S. from different parts of Canada, avoiding death at every turn, and then converge in Texas, where they form a giant swarm and fly to Mexico to spend the cold months cuddling together on trees like this:
Growing up in Ohio, we saw bazillions of monarchs every summer, and I remember my mom always telling me not to touch their wings or they wouldn’t be able to fly anymore. I guess it’s because of her that I didn’t grow up to strangle kittens and set them on fire on the high school football field like everyone else in my town. Thanks, Mom.
Inspired by this, here’s a collection of monarch-related finds from Etsy:
• monarch ornament and pendant
• monarch steampunk ring (only minorly monarch-related, but awesome)
And of course:
• Confederate flag monarch barrette (Oh, crap, the seller removed this! But I want the record to reflect that a Confederate flag butterfly barrette totally existed on Etsy and was horrendous.)
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