Suitcase Goals

Hidden Treasures

Look at the sweet wallpaper we unearthed in one of the bedrooms at the House Across:

Solar Eclipse......cont

Solar Eclipse

Microblading

Did you/have you noticed in previous posts that I have absolutely no eyebrows of my own? It's OK -- I just draw them in with a pencil. 

But that's irritating and almost free, so why not spend $600 on a semi-permanent solution that will fade in about 2-3 years? 

I'm talking about microblading. It's like a tattoo, but less permanent. AND I LOVE IT. 

Don't ever let anybody tell you it doesn't hurt. Because it really hurts bad. And it takes two hours. Twice. So just prepare yourself for that fact and never mind anybody else's opinion on the subject. 

Also for about a week you're going to look like two chocolate-y brown caterpillars crawled on your face and died. But that fades and they look amazing again after you pick all the scabs off. 

You'll regret it for like 5 days.

But don't worry, you'll go back to lookin' like yourself again.

Even the Candadians Have Them!

Four-...and sometimes five-leafed clovers!

As seen in Montreal, Quebec

The Nicest Thing I Ever Had

I have the greatest and most beautiful and sweet and brilliantly talented friends. Ever. 

One is named Heather and she works in Product Development at J.W. Hulme Co, a 105-year-old Minnesota company, a real MADE IN THE USA kind of place. Production is right here in St. Paul, Minnesota. Check out their story. She and her husband moved about three-and-a-half hours away last year to take care of some family obligations, but she kept her job and has stayed with me in my apartment from time-to-time to ease the commute. I charged her eggs. Yep, eggs. Up north she's got a little farm, and would bring me fresh farm eggs from her pet chickens...so fresh they sometimes still had chicken poop on them. 

Anyway, she's so amazing and I'm always bragging to anybody who will listen about all the bags she makes for J.W. Hulme. Look! She even appeared in some Korean magazine sewing away!

That's Heather!

That's Heather too! Modeling for the company's facebook page - on the right my other friend Kerrie who also works there! Remember when Kerrie made me my passport cover?!!?!?!

Here she is hard at work. Anybody recognize that shirt?

WELL.

Her last day was on Friday and so she won't be needing to stay at my place anymore which was pretty sad and I'm going to miss her so much, so we decided to go out for dinner and drinks and OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT WHAT SHE MADE FOR ME:

The Mini Excursion, in custom colors:

Look at the lining! I LOVE IT. It's tiny little 110 cameras on the most beautiful retro-inspired fabric!

...AND THE BEST PART:

...AND THE SECOND BEST PART:

I'm so happy and proud!

You guys can all go home to your kids and your soul-mate-life-partners and your grand-kids and your pets and hold them all you want. Because I'll be holding onto my new bag. I'm going to marry it, and when I die you can throw my ashes inside because we will never ever be apart not ever, ever, ever.

Canning. It's the New "Having a Boyfriend"

A few weeks ago I went up to my parents' place because I wanted my mom to teach me how to can. We found these fantastically gigantic cabbages at the farmer's market (I guess the deer ate all of the cabbage from my mom's garden). Look how big! 

"Weak chin"

It was fun chopping these babies up for like five minutes. And then it was terrible work. But the first five minutes? I just stabbed my moms knife into the gigantic head of cabbage and then it looked like the earthquake on the kids' movie Ice Age where the ice just split and split and split on its own. Cool. 

Chopped for days. Blisters and everything. My mom bought 12 normal cabbages and I bought the two gigantic ones, which worked out to be the equivalent of about 8 normal sized ones. 

As you chop them, you salt them (canning salt or basically any iodized salt will work. Then you let them sit for a few days and even a few weeks if you don't mind mold and/or fruit flies, but if you do mind those things you can SMOOSH the cabbage (mix in a bunch of caraway seeds) into jars. SMOOSH it HARD so you can fit a lot in there, and then you let that ferment for six weeks, or if you're like me and my mom you get impatient and water bath them after only a couple weeks. We figure they'll keep fermenting all sealed up. We hope. 

32 quarts!!!

OH you can can anything!!!

Take time out to see a full-on double rainbow!

And now I'm self-sufficient. I'm mostly pickling beets and doing saur kraut at my place. I don't have all the fancy equipment but I really don't need it! I just use a big spaghetti pot with a little rack on the bottom and you know, can. 

THIS ISN'T A HOW TO BLOG OKAY?!? I just got a great 10 days with my mom and she taught me how to fish and now I can eat for life. Get it?

Don't forget wine.

OMG

Fanny

A good friend of mine was recently photographed and subsequently mocked for his choice in hands-free gear-carrying:

According to my source:

The Oscar winner, 44, laughed off his style choice with a big grin during an interview with CSN Houston's Julia Morales. He attended the game with his 6-year-old son Levi, and topped off his retro bag with a white T-shirt, khaki pants, a baseball cap and sunglasses.

"I'm not afraid of the fanny pack. You gotta kinda put it on the side to make it look a little not as nerdy, but still, practicality wins out," the Dallas Buyers Club actor said. "I got so much gear in here that I don't want in my pockets."

You know what, how many times have you been around someone and they're like, 'Aw, man, I forgot so and so and I gotta go back to my car.'" Pretending to take something out of his hip pouch, he added: "I got mine right here."

I couldn't agree more, Pal. That is SO TRUE.

And I do want to go on record and state that it was me who very probably single-free-handedly started this trend:

As snapped by the paparazzi, April 2011

And again, January 2014

What's a Nerdy Girl With a Bad Back to Do?

Why, buy a kneeling chair on Amazon for $79.74 of course! I had it shipped to work but I bought it for my home office. I've been testing it to see what I think. 

It's kind of hard to get used to, because at first it felt like I basically traded low-back pain for incredible shin pain. And then I shifted my weight into my butt more and stuck my knees into the knee pad instead of my shins and that feels way better. It's a great conversation piece. Everybody wants to try it. And, since my cube at work is near the front door everybody teases me on their way to the bathroom.  

They make a mockery of me, Mom! Because this is what they see:

If having good posture is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Of course I came up with a funny comeback way too late. I might try it tomorrow. Here it is: 

"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?"

And then when I finally sat down at my home office tonight to write this blog post, and my friend Heather walked by she made a mockery of me again, Mom! Because this is what she saw:

Inception!

And then I said:
"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?" to Heather but she didn't get it.

They're Fake

Some of you have asked -- and no, these are not my real eyelashes:

Duh.

Here's what they actually look like (although those three on the very right are obviously fake):

My friend Roxie tells me I shouldn't tell people they're fake. I should just smile and say "thank you" when complimented. I can't handle the stress. What if somebody found out somehow that they aren't real and I wasn't the one who told them? This is why I can never get boob implants. 

I go to a place in Edina where I bought a membership for $60 a month to get them "filled". A lady named Doua dims the lights, puts on some very relaxing music and proceeds to glue an individual fake eyelash to each of my invisible ones while I sleep. Of course I sleep. There's relaxing music! I made her take this next photo. As you can see, at the end of three weeks most of them have fallen out and it's time to get them "filled" and I procrastinated just a bit too long. Those white things separate my bottom lashes so she doesn't glue my eyes shut. 

I know that I fall asleep because I frequently wake myself up mid-snore. The way that I snore is so funny too it's like a "PAAAAAAA" [breathe in]...."PAAAAA"...[breathe in]..."PAAAAAA". I begged Doua to take a video of the snoring but I think she was too embarrassed because she didn't do it.

I think they're worth every penny. If not just for the opportunity once a month to take that delicious snore-nap.

Favorite Things

Well I very optimistically bought two tickets to St. Vincent's concert months ago -- and I still don't have a boy date, SURPRISE SURPRISE. I'm taking Hobo Siren instead. If you get stuck in an Internet wormhole watching St. Vincent videos all afternoon as a result of this post, YOU'RE WELCOME.

My Favorite Things, Vol. 2

I shared a complete list of my favorite things last November, but unfortunately I could only think of one thing (Old Dutch dill pickle chips). Well tonight I thought of another thing to add to my list of favorite things! And here it is!

Free tampons in public restrooms!

They just put them out! Anybody can have one!

What's the Opposite of a Pet Peeve?

What's the opposite of a Pet Peeve? You know, when you see something you really like? What's that called?

I don't know what it's called. But here's something that I like. I like it when I see women in hijab with their cell phones shoved in there so they can talk "hands free":

http://phillipswhittier365.blogspot.com/

I like it a lot.

A Glimpse Into the Mind of a Lonely Old Lady

Some people might watch this video clip and go "awwwwwww that's a cute dad and his little girl." I watched it and I started bawling because in my mind this is exactly what my imagined husband (I'm really into redheads) and my little girl (I'm really into owl pajamas and tiny pink ukuleles) would get up to after some fireworks happened in the neighborhood. It's something to do with 36-year-old ovaries and hormones and it's really strong and there's nothing you nor I nor my therapist (if I had one) can do about it. I don't even really truly want a little girl but if I did she would definitely be wearing little skinny jeans and a girly white tank top with a tiny pink flower decal at the neckline and her name would definitely be June but we would call her Junie. She's convinced I can really remove my own thumb and put it back on (but it's just a slight of hand trick). Also when she loses her first tooth we would secretly put it in her dad's coffee hidden inside a spoonful of sugar and then everybody would laugh and laugh. Her sister would surely be named Louise, Lou for short and I would definitely be pregnant with their brother Hal. The kind of skinny pregnant where my nose never gets too wide and people say "you're ALL baby" and they really mean it. Childbirth is "amazing" but I would never say that out loud because I would't want any of the other pregnant ladies to feel bad and I for sure would never lose my patience and certainly not my temper like I do with my nieces and nephews. I digress. Watch the video. You'll die.

Hanna the Potter

My niece Hanna is quite a little potter. She basically spent her 11th and 12th grades of high school in the Pottery Studio, making infinite bowls and plates and coffee cups and tea pots and I gotta tell ya, her work has gotten pretty good. Sure, she's had her mishaps:

I still love this one! It holds all my earrings.

I use her stuff all the time! That one is where I keep my quarters for laundry and that one is where I put candy if I ever have any and that one I plan to have a bowl of soup in if I ever make any soup.

Aren't they great!?!

And this one just looks cool but sometimes a piece of mail will go in there until I can read it later:

OK. So. All that stuff is great, yes. But pictured below is my absolute favoritest piece of pottery that Hanna has ever given to me. And she didn't even intend for it to be used the way I use it, but I told her and she thought it was pretty AWESOME, as do I. As do I.

Looks perfectly innocent, doesn't it? Sitting there, so pretty on top of the toilet? (For photographic purposes I removed the roll of toilet paper, the candle, the matches, my flatiron, a hair tie, a pair of earrings and a bottle of hairspray.)

YES. So innocent.

Adorable.

HA!  You didn't guess, did you? It's nefarious purpose?  TAMPON HOLDER. Put in your orders now ladies and I'll see if I can't getcha one. Only $79.95 plus tax and shipping and handling and a finder's fee for me.

She did not pot the turtle.

Measuring Up

So it's not like I'm obsessed about it, but I turned 36 this year. I was born in 1977. My niece Miyo has taken to calling me "Grandma" and "old lady" and when I protested, my mom pointed out that technically, I could be a Grandma. 

I always thought that at 36 I'd be all grown up. Except I frequently eat dinner over the kitchen sink and fall asleep in my clothes. My bedroom looks like the bedroom of a 16-year-old boy and I once found a chicken wing in my bed.

Today, I was feeling very curious about which celebrities are the same age as I am and how I stack up when making unfair comparisons to their lives. Here's what a simple Google search revealed:

Shakira, Singer. Born February 2, 1977. Married to that hot soccer player above and just had her first baby. Not a natural blonde, but it looks better on her than me. Fabulous poet-lyricist-singer. Amazing at belly dancing. Her hips do not lie.

Rob McElhenney, writer It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Rob was born April 14, 1977. He is married (to Kaitlin Olson who plays Dee on Sunny) and has a baby. He makes his living as a writer. Looks good, even when fat. Gets to work with Danny DeVito.

James Van Der Beek, aka Dawson, Dawson's Creek. James was born on March 8, 1977. He is married with two kids. He makes his living as an actor. He enjoys watching football and baseball.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, actor. She was born on November 16, 1977. Married to Peter Sarsgaard, two kids. Gorgeous. Has gotten paid to kiss The Dude. Nurses her children in public. (Google it.)

Orlando Bloom, actor. Born January 13, 1977. Likes to make millions by signing on to epic trilogies i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. Married to Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr. They have a baby. 

Robin Thicke, that guy Miley Cyrus twerked up on. Born March 10, 1977. Married. Baby. 

• Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. April 14, 1977. Married to Freddie Prinze Jr. Two kids.
• Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty, The Help. March 24, 1977. 2013 Oscar nominee. In a long term relationship. Named "Sexiest Actress Alive" by Glamour magazine.
• Liv Tyler, actor. July 1, 1977. Very famous dad. Has a son called Milo.
• Zachary Quinto, actor. June 2, 1977. Single. Hot. Gay. The new Spock.  
• Colin Hanks, actor. Son of Tom Hanks. November 24, 1977. Married. Two kids.
• Kerry Washington, actor. January 31, 1977. Married to a San Francisco 49'er.

The list goes on and on. Need I even mention Saved by the Bell's Dustin Diamond, aka Screech?

So far, the only ones I seem to be winning over are Brittany Murphy who is dead, and Edward Furlong who I thought was dead, but was arrested as recently as January 2013 for beating his wife. (However he does have a baby.) 

---

Meanwhile I get angry when my greasy hair can't make it one more day without a shampooing and I get a real sense of accomplishment when I finish a full season of some TV show all in one day.


SO: Which celebrities are from your birth year, and how do you measure up?