Look, everybody!
It's my birthday profiterole!
From Sante.
12.02.2010
Random Pretty Man
It's my birthday and it's my blog and so we're having Johnny Depp again.
He can help me blow out my candles anytime....
What I'm Reading
I've chosen Amsterdam by Ian McEwan for my next book.
Here's what Amazon has to say about it:
When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top.I am intrigued - and a little scared. (Yes. It doesn't take very much to scare me.)
I'll let you know how it turns out....
This Charming Closet
They are the Design Edition Pierre Hardy Peep-Toed Wedges from The Gap.
Basically, I wanted them for a long time and they weren't available. Now they are available but I don't want to pay $195 for them so I thought I'd wait for the holiday sale...
Then I forgot about them.
Then I remembered them.
Sunday night I just tried to order them and the damn coupons don't work on them.
Bastards!
This Charming House
I know I blogged awhile back about hanging curtains in the sunroom.
And I haven't abandoned the project, but I have been thwarted.
You see, I need these darling extending swing arm curtain rods from Restoration Hardware (the only place I could find what I wanted.)
The good news is that they were on sale.
The bad news is that they weren't available in the store and they were back ordered on-line to the end of the century!
Not really - but still.
I ordered them at the beginning of November (although when I first looked in mid-October they were also back ordered).
They shipped them yesterday so I'm hoping that by next week's blog the curtains will be ready for viewing...
12.01.2010
The Age of Innocence
The thing about being young(er) is that you are so sure about the things that you know. I remember turning 25 and feeling like I had arrived. I was a grown up. I felt like I ought to be issued a special I.D. card or a badge or something. Official Adult. I knew everything.
Then during the years between 28 and 33 life just kicked me in the teeth and I was left battered and bleeding.
Lost. Alone. Unhappy.
I realize now that I had these ideas in my head that I was sure was reality. And I thought that my life would roll out before me like a red carpet. I flitted along waiting for my life to happen to me and I really believed that all I had to do was point myself in the right direction and wait for it all to appear.
Husband. Babies. White picket fence. That was the future that would come and in the meantime, I was young. I had plenty of time.
When I was 28 I had no doubt, not one, of what my future would be.
You can imagine my surprise when that didn't happen. And to have arrived at an age more than 40 and sort of slowly realized that it was never really what I wanted, anyway.
I'd like to say that turning 40 didn't bother me, but I would be lying. I used to say (when I was 28) that I would never mind getting older. I know now that it's easy to think those things when your face is still full of collagen. 40 was harder than I ever could have imagined before I actually got there.
I was happy, but I was in existential crisis, y'all.
So 40 came and went and I started to think about the next part of my life. I felt really confident in my ability to be a young woman. I didn't have a clue about how to be a middle aged one. And having learned - the hard way - that your life has to be built, not acquired, I was a little concerned about my ability to build forward.
Now 50 is looming on the (still out there, but still) horizon. The other day I thought about that and almost hyperventilated.
I always assumed that I'd have a husband and a Volvo and be raising children at this point in my life. But having reached 40 and failed to marry and/or have children, I realized that there aren't a lot of role models for girls like me. I'm on my own, out here, for the most part.
Thank God for Sex and the City or I'd be completely screwed.
So if my 20's and 30's were marked by what I thought I knew, my 40's - so far - have been marked by what I don't know.
And when you're me, not knowing is hard. And it's an ongoing struggle.
The good news is that my life has gotten better and better as I've gotten older, collagen loss notwithstanding. There is a lot to be said for age and wisdom and experience. I would never want anyone to think that I've gotten anything figured out because I don't. But I do know a few things now that I didn't know then.
I know that I don't know.
For the most part I know what I don't know.
I know how to quiet my mind. I know never to say what I will or won't do - because you don't know that until you're in it.
I know that judgment is a dangerous thing.
I know how important kindness is - for myself and others.
And although it seems pretty shallow, I'm glad the outside is holding up well, at least in the right light.
Image: Hymnal by Carl Christensen.
Charming Words
erst-while [urst-hwahyl]
- adjective
1. former; of times past
Image: Three Balloons by Lucy Snowe Photography.
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