It seems like the few people I really would love to have spend the day with me are all otherwise occupied slash unavailable on my birthday this year.
I would like to shuff this feeling of inadequacy and being unloved…, as well as the feeling of just not bothering to do anything for my birthday at all, since they can’t be part of it….
Perhaps I need just to go ahead and pity myself and have a great big, emotion-releasing cry, and get it all felt and out of my system, and then I can readdress how I want to celebrate my life this year.
It’s funny how, even at the thought of that, a miniature version just happened, and I’ve even started glimpsing ideas of things I’d like to do to celebrate life this year. 🙂
Praise God – He helps me through it all, even and especially if He is the one throwing it at me. 😛
When I lived at my mom’s last year, and had access to the high efficiency units that did wash and dry with a combined total of about an hour, it was no big deal – I did my laundry just about every time I had enough worn clothing for a single load.
I actually really enjoyed it.
Now – as well as just about every year prior to having the HE units last year – I can’t seem to get myself to do laundry until I’m actually about to run out of clothing… or, rather, have run out of something vital.
In high school, my best friend and I would have “swimsuit day” every so often, for which we would wear swimsuits underneath our school uniforms.
She participated, because she actually found her swimsuit top to be as comfortable as, if not more comfortable than, her regular bras.
I participated – and established – because I was out of clean bras and underwear, and so a swimsuit was my only option for undergarments.
Therefore, every couple weeks or so, we’d have a “swimsuit day”, which I could tell her about the night before, while I still didn’t necessarily out on a load of laundry (though I usually put on laundry the night I ended up pulling out a swimsuit for the next morning).
Fast forward to now: as it stands, this will be my third or fourth night of using a dress and t-shirt to dry myself after my nighttime shower…, because both sets of my towels have been used and placed in the dirty laundry pile/s.
I’m thinking it has to do, in part, with the fact that the HE washers are so much safer on the clothes, especially in terms of color transferring… when there’s a high risk of color bleed, there’s a low chance of my carefully organizing out everything to be wash-ready any time soon.
Also, it just takes so much longer with regular washers and dryers – close to an hour for each.
Seeing as how we live in Houston, I definitely don’t want to put on a load to wash, and then leave for more than an hour… and I am definitely not reliable to turn back up in an hour, if I’ve left home – I just get too distracted with other exciting things that are all out there, in the world, not in my house, you know?
And so, instead, I have laundry pile up and pile up… and I’ve been quite tempted (and even have done it with a suitcase from a trip recently) to pack it all up and bring it to my mom’s house – I never did that in college, so maybe now it’s time, at last. 😛
Also, one bit of defense for me: My current washer and dryer are reached only by going outside on the porch first, and so 1)I want to be safe and not go do that late at night (when I actually am at home and have time to do laundry), and 2)I didn’t have a key that could lock that door properly for the first month+ of living here, and it just seemed a terrible idea to leave the room unlocked, so I just didn’t do laundry for the first several weeks of living here.
Now, however, I have a key that works(!), so I can do laundry here.
Located at 227 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, is a little shop by the name of St. Hrouda. Walking inside, one will find a combination boutique / art gallery, managed by the fashion extraordinaire Nicole Bell. St. Hrouda’s walls are chicly lined with art and clothing from local artists and brands, including, my particular favorite, those made and designed by Nicole Bell herself.
Though I was in Brooklyn this past July, I have not yet seen this wonderful boutique/art gallery, because it has only recently opened its doors. When Nicole first took over the space this fall, it was a somewhat drab and old-looking little shop. Within weeks, she and her father, through their combined genius, had put together one of the most classy spaces I’ve ever seen (even in photographs). The before and after photos of the space showed how true a transformation had taken place, and they actually had me wanting to jump up and down to celebrate the amazing results. It is now the bea-U-tiful space of St. Hrouda, named for Nicole’s grandmother, and housing brands from New York, Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Paris, London, and LA, while featuring, of course, Nicole Bell. And the gallery portion of St. Hrouda displays art by local New York artists (including, again, art by Nicole Bell herself), all for sale.
On a regular basis, Nicole hosts a ladies’ night at St. Hrouda – from which I always see photos of wine and fabulous personal styling sessions (Think of what Becky Bloomwood does with her customers in the Sophie Kinsella novels) – as well as a variety of other events and pop-up shops/parties to help integrate St. Hrouda into the beautiful community surrounding it.
Photos of the Grandmother Hrouda who inspired the name, along one of the walls of St. Hrouda
Now, let’s talk for just a minute about the amazing, spectacularly inspired fashionista behind it all: Nicole Bell. I recently had the opportunity to visit and interview Nicole in her work studio in Brooklyn, just weeks before she began work on opening St. Hrouda. Nicole is From Houston, Texas, and, only a handful of years ago, founded her fashion brand Nicole Bell. Nicole herself is a goofy yet stylishly sassy woman who is taking on the world with long legs and big, brave strides. She never fails to put a smile on my face when I am with her, and her determined outer self never hides the truth of what it really takes to be successful in fashion – life is hard, and making it in fashion is even harder.
Nicole Bell of Nicole Bell and St. Hrouda
Nevertheless, fashion is her passion, and so she is going for it with all she’s got (and then some she’s still figuring out)!
Every time I see a Nicole Bell outfit, my inner Lady Gaga whoops with joy and longing – Ooooh! I want! I want! it always seems to shout, over and over, not unlike a little kid begging for ice cream. Nicole’s designs are impeccable and utterly breathtaking on the powerhouse female front. When I picture my BA* self taking on the world in heels, she’s wearing Nicole Bell. And the world is looking on in awestruck astonishment. 🙂
Do yourself a favor, and give my interview with Nicole Bell a listen. I learned so much about the fashion world, as well as how Nicole comes up with her individual designs and collections/lines. Her sense of gratitude to those who have contributed to her journey thus far – as well as those who continue to contribute and show their support – is clear, as well as her almost unreal dedication to sharing her eye and inspiration with the world through fashion, despite the many, many hardships that have come with her endeavors and that still lie ahead. Nicole does not have it all figured out, and that is just part of the beauty of exploration involved in furthering her passion for fashion.
The talk these days is all about getting to know the people behind our food and our clothing – Buy local is a regular mantra (alongside Know your farmer and Made in the USA, in efforts to support quality products and fair trade, respectively). The woman behind this shop and clothing line is definitely worth getting to know. Especially if you’re in the New York area, give Nicole Bell a solid look – she is local and well worth the visit. And, even if you aren’t in the area, look her up anyway – she’s that good.
When you find yourself interested in learning about the glories, trials, and tribulations of pursuing a love of and passion for fashion, give our interview a listen. If you missed the link above, click here to listen to the interview I did with Nicole!
Definitely check out (and follow) her Instagram accounts for St. Hrouda (@st.hrouda) and Nicole Bell (@nicolebelldesigns) – the photos and videos on there inspire me just about every day.
I check one last time to verify that all the ink is dry, and then, since it is dry, I strategically position and carefully slide the talking birthday card into its envelope.
Satisfied with what is left visible, I lick a few fingers and rub them to the bottom edge of the envelope flap, and seal the tip of the flap to the main part of the envelope.
Perfection.
Sure, I take extra care in positioning a card, but that is hardly the weird part of this never-changing process of mine… obviously, the weird bit is where I lick my fingers.
So, why do I do it?
Well, ever since George Costanza’s fiancée died from licking all of their wedding announcement envelopes, it’s just what I’ve done.
I went through a time where I always used a sink to wet my fingers, or even the envelope directly at times, but I usually am too lazy to take the trip and care required for that to go well.
Since seeing that episode, something within me has taken the extra-safe route, and has just forbidden me to lick envelopes anymore.
Perhaps I’ve done it a handful of times since that episode, but we’re talking an actual max of five times, here… in almost 13 years. 😛
I have told myself, on occasion, that I do the finger licking because I don’t want to get a paper cut on my tongue, licking the envelope…, but I know that is false, because I just did it more cautiously after that happened, and I mostly got over the concern – yes, that, too, is a benefit of not licking the envelopes, but it is merely a perquisite of my main intention of not being minutely poisoned by the glue.
And so, thanks to that absurd episode of Seinfeld, and my dad for being my ever-buddy in watching Seinfeld, I have been perhaps forever changed, and hopefully for the better, if not just the sillier. 😛
Tonight, I finally watched a film recommended to me by a couple of high school senior girls, called “Girl Rising“.
Before it even was finished, I found myself rather wanting to find a way to get myself funded to go over somewhere where teachers are needed, and to teach children (girls especially) everything I possibly can.
And I am now somewhat worried that I might actually end up doing something radical… like just that… or even finding a way to find a girls boarding school here somewhere, to bring girls who otherwise can’t afford anything, let alone education, and that will be this school I have considered and discussed so much in recent years, the one I have though about founding…
That seems even more absurd than my just going somewhere… somehow…
My best friend asked me today about my relationship with God, for she knows I have been in a new-to-me spot of a bit of distance from God + a disconnect from religion, and that I have been somewhat flummoxed as to what to do about it all.
I thought about it, and discovered that, while nothing big has changed, – there is still this disconnect with religion and my place within it, as well as a distance from God – things have changed – I am not so worried about the religion concern, and I have actively accepted and, even, sought out God in the space around me on a regular basis.
Still nothing too big in the lines of church and religion, but I’ve had a big feeling of, when I consider how I haven’t figured out my place in it all and how I feel like something is wrong about that, I have a filling feeling of, ‘It’s okay,’ and something helps me release a deep breath inside of me.
Whenever this happens, I can tell that it is true… it is only a temporary situation, and it is okay right now, because now is not the time for me to worry about it all and figure it all out…
Instead, it keeps feeling like the time to love and to share my talents… and slowly but surely to let go and let God.
The eternal that is within us all, connects us all, is still there and always will be – I need not fret about what vocabulary to use to address it, when talking about it to others… I just need to let it be and to let myself be with it… you know?
Today, I socialized while getting myself some of the good Japanese culture, and even a bit of the language, too.
I made this:
The fancy and “real” one is the white paperboard one, but I messed it up, so I much prefer my practice one on the newspaper (that’s why I put the hanko [stamp] on it, too).
It is the Japanese writing for Anshin, which means ‘peace of mind; freedom from care; relief.’
We did it as an activity called kakizome 書き初め, which is the first kanji one writes in the new year, and it is an intention and wish one makes for the year.
I selected 安心, because that is what I want in abundance in my life this year (I almost considered アットホウム, which is not kanji, but is spelling out a word, and, in this case, spelling out the two foreign words “at home”, because I couldn’t find anything that seemed quite right for what I longed for in my life this year…, but then I found 安心).
安心 was perfect, as soon as someone wrote it down for me… we had discussed the meaning, which I really liked, but it was when I saw it that I loved it.
I don’t remember what the very top part is, but the whole thing includes the word for woman and the word for heart – those two kanji, combined with the meaning?… done deal – let’s do this. 😛
And, so, we did. 🙂
Post-a-day 2019 (The last year of Emperor Heisei, Heisei 31 平成三十一 )
I have recently begun listening to this podcast about alcoholism. I haven’t really listened to podcasts for the past ten+ years, since I discovered that there would be far more podcasts that interested me than I actually could take the time to hear, and so just gave up on them, instead of being frustrated over having to pick which ones were the most important, being stressed out over feeling like I must listen to them as often as possible, and all that jazz. However, someone sent me this podcast, and I accepted the proffered link, because of the various degrees of connection various members of my family have with addiction, and specifically alcohol addiction. (Let’s just say that, while not everyone has it, we’ve had from the slightest to one of the worst cases of it just in my lifetime.)
It’s called “An Addict Named Mary”. I was surprised to find that, while the podcast is just a girl – I say “girl”, but she is actually a woman in her upper thirties or so – recording with her phone or laptop in each episode, it is actually really interesting. I don’t know if there are other podcasts done by recovering alcoholics, but I like this one. She spends the time talking about the experience of addiction and what is involved in recovery and moving beyond the active addiction (i.e. still drinking alcohol) into a fully sober life, which she hadn’t experienced in decades… and it’s kind of fascinating. I keep coming back to it and listening whenever there’s a new episode, partly because I find it beneficial for myself, as someone who is around people in active addiction, as well as people in recovery, but mostly because I like the girl. She’s funny and goofy, and she’s totally honest about the b*** underneath at times – it almost feels as though I can see the light and depth in her eyes, the eternal joy becoming manifest at last within them, as she struggles willingly through it all, and aims to make a difference for others however they are ready to have her help. I also get the occasional glimpse of the sad, outwardly fun, go-getter who desperately just wanted to be loved, little girl who used to hide in a sea of alcohol (and, occasionally, plenty of other drugs)…, and it’s beautiful to see the transformation.
I particularly liked the first two interviews she did (at least, I think they were the first two). The first was with her sponsee, someone she is sponsoring in recovery, and it wasn’t exactly an interview, but more like just the two of them talking about things. Specifically, the way they talk about their active addiction days is very eye-opening for me, especially as I saw how many people I know who say the same things these girls were expressing…, but who are not recovering alcoholics…. and it had me wonder about how much I’ve been living with blinders on regarding alcohol addiction/abuse.
The second was actually an interview. And it was rough, but super good. She interviewed a guy who admits to being an alcoholic, but who says also that he is not willing or ready to do anything to stop his drinking, despite the many and deep negative effects it has on his life (including, but not limited to his relationship with his young children). Now this one was…. just wow. For anyone dealing with a person who is in active addiction, I highly recommend listening to this episode. For everyone else, I still highly recommend it, because I find it so important for people to see an honest expression of what is going on inside the head of someone who cannot give up an addiction. We have them all around us in society, and the first step to helping them and our society as a whole is to understand and thereby love them. I believe that all change, to be true, must come from love. And this is a guide to the first step involved in loving the people who can not (currently) give up their active addictions.
As a whole, I recommend the podcast. Like I mentioned, it is not very professional, but the sound quality is good enough to sit through it, and the information is definitely good enough to sit through it. Give it a go, trust me.
As I understand it, there are multiple ways to subscribe and auto-download the episodes, however, I just check back regularly and listen via my web browser, because I’m old-school and don’t want to download anything else to my phone. 😛 At the beginning of just about every episode, if not all of them, she encourages feedback and contacting her through her e-mail address – anaddictnamedmary@gmail.com, to be sure. I sent her an e-mail, asking about something a friend and I were wondering, based on something she’d mentioned briefly, but that we totally didn’t get, our not having the alcohol addiction and all. She replied back, telling me that she’d do an episode on it! That was just recently, so we’re both anxiously awaiting the episode. 🙂
Do you ever find yourself walking through a store, looking at all the items for sale around you, and feeling utterly sick at the thought of it all?
Walking through a Marshalls today with my aunt and cousin, on a trip my cousin had been wanting for a while for some household things, I had this experience as I walked to the bathroom, just before leaving.
I thought of my best friend, and how she had lived in The Gambia…. the way things are there…., and I thought of how things are in so many similar places, where air conditioning and mattresses and safe showering and clean water are not a given but a rarity and a practically-unachievable luxury… and I felt repulsed by the few items – some foods and soaps and a bottle cleaner for my water bottles and tea bottles – I myself had pulled out, let alone the overwhelming sense of the thousands of items surrounding me that even I found entirely unnecessary and wasteful…
And I felt terrible…
And then I looked into it further than merely being upset…
And I saw that this is the life and the part of the world and the lifestyle in which I have been placed and in which I have opted to remain… there is much I dislike about it all, and yet there is more than enough to keep me in it, wanting to be part of it… to some degree, anyway…
And it reminded me of what I would tell my students whenever they complained about school rules or homework from other teachers or the administration, that this is the school and the society in which they are choosing to participate, and so they can follow the rules and either get over it or work toward change, or they can go somewhere else to have different rules… as long as they select to be at this school, though, they are agreeing to follow this school’s rules.
And so my Marshalls visit was a lot like that for me – I want to be in this culture, and so I have to accept the ‘rules’ this culture follows… I can work toward change, as I already do, and I can work for myself to buy and to use and to produce what I feel is appropriate, as I also already do, and I can encourage and empower others to do the same, all while accepting that thisis the way things currently are here, whether I like them or not.
And I totally wanted to go check the dumpster, instead of walking the inside of the store, in hopes of preventing the sad waste that likely was back there… unfortunately, circumstances did not quite allow for such a move today.
So it goes… an attitude of gratitude is a good way to start, and then we can make some real progress. 🙂
My cousin and I were talking tonight about old, old memories in our lives.
Growing up, I had a situation that was incredibly unique at the time (and that still is a bit unique nowadays), in which my parents each had children from a previous spouse, only had me together, married when I was three, and divorced one another when I was four.
My siblings on my mom’s side not only lived in the same neighborhood as I did, but my mom and I were regularly at their dad’s house, spending time with them and, even, their dad, who was my mom’s first husband, but with whom my mom was no longer involved in such a relationship.
My siblings on my dad’s side moved to Georgia (until they kind of moved back, off and on, one by one, starting when I was about nine), and so were only around for certain holidays and for what I guess to have been about a month each summer.
My cousin pointed out that she remembered being often at the place my mom and I lived for many years together after she split up from my dad, the one that was in the neighborhood with my brothers and their dad.
I, too, recalled that they often were there visiting us, and we often were at their house (two hours away, by the way) visiting them.
She then presented the interesting and confounding concept of accepting the idea of someone seeing one’s cousins more often than seeing one’s own siblings…, because that’s really how it was in the first decade and a half of my life, so far as my mom’s sister’s children and my dad’s children were concerned.
I have many more memories from earlier childhood with those cousins than I do with my siblings on my dad’s side.
Certainly, I saw my brothers from my mom all the time, almost daily…, but my cousins were, as I can pull up old school activities and projects to show, some of my favorite people in the world, and they were often on my mind, because I saw them often…, such was not the case with my siblings on my dad’s side.
Sure, I cared about them, and I had spectacular memories from the brief time we all spent in the same house when my parents were married to one another, but I really think we could say that I had more a relationship with and attitude towards them that people have with cousins, rather than one with siblings.
So, my half brothers were like my brothers, my cousins were like my half siblings, and my other half siblings were like my cousins… relationship- and attitude-wise, anyway.
Kind of crazy, huh?
I hadn’t really ever thought much about it, because, as my cousin also pointed out tonight, it can be amazing what kinds of things we just accept as children, not concerned in the least about whether they are uncommon or absurd.
I guess the absurdity doesn’t surprise me, of course, because, well, even now, absurd is normal in my life, as this same cousin so graciously pointed out to me a few years ago. 😛
hannah ananas 