It Depends On What The Definition of Is Is

Make of this what you will.

The most salient memories I have of spending time with my father as a child (and mother and brother - so I guess I should say the memories I have of time our family spent together) involve one of three places: Bloomingdale's, Sak's, Macy's.

While other families presumably picnicked in the park, learned to ski, went to the movies, volunteered at soup kitchens, our family hunted. For sales. On things we may or may not have needed. These were frequently Bataan Death March kinds of afternoons. We had to go to everyone's department and we had to try on many things and watch others try on things. While my memory might be exaggerating, it isn't exaggerating by much. We spent more time in department stores than we did almost anywhere other than school. Sometimes there would be a snack, a reward for the hours of shopping and the fact that we were probably walking home to the Upper East Side. Other times there was barely a bathroom break.

This childhood trauma has manifested itself in my adult life in two ways: I hate shopping in stores and I turn my nose up at most "sales."

A sale is only worth something if it's worth something. 20% off is not a sale. In the lifecycle of a season the clothing is only really at full price for maybe three weeks - then come the holiday sales, the three-day weekend sales, the secret mid-week sales, and finally the it's-time-to-stock-next-season's-clothing sales. Since a clothing season only lasts about 10 weeks, the chances of the item you just had to have being gone before it gets to 50% off are slim. Take my favorite, Manolo Blahnik. His New York store runs sales twice a year, in January and July. For the first two weeks of the sale the shoes are 30% off; for the second two weeks of the sale, the shoes are 50% off. Ever since I was able to snag a pair of knee-high black leather boots in my size that I promised myself I would only buy if they made it to 50% off, I haven't even considered walking into the store during the 30% off weeks. Because, in honesty, it's not as though I NEED another pair of shoes.

For many years, I've been a lazy online shopper, hanging out on gap.com and oldnavy.com and occasionally bananarepublic.com until big sale season. Then I buy pretty much everything I can find in my size, try it on at home, and send back what I don't like. This has resulted in my owning a lot of dresses made from t-shirts and little else. But a couple of months ago, Amy introduced me to an online destination that is essentially the clearinghouse for brands' old shit that is crowding the warehouses. And some of this shit is really really cheap. Cheap enough that if it gets to the house and doesn't fit or looks awful, I'm only slightly disappointed. I have been stocking up on sub-$50 dresses in an attempt to be prettier on a regular basis (see also hair washing, mascara application, and flossing). Now my closet looks more like the closet of an adult woman (though still with far less items than one would imagine - I told you, I dislike shopping). Sure, some of the stuff is still dreadfully overpriced, and expensive enough that I wouldn't want to make a mistake; and some of it is, in my opinion, ugly. But overall, between the two clearinghouse sites I have joined, I have netted 10 dresses, also known as more than enough to be able to throw everything else in my be-Gapped closet out.

And since I know one or two women read this, and perhaps have not already checked these meccas of saledom out, I invite you to take a peak:

Ruelala.com

Ideeli.com

Later on, please feel free to blame me for the fallout from these introductions.

Two Summer Recipes

I have always wanted one of those beautiful food blogs with incandescent light sweeping across my beautifully plated foods. There are a couple of obstacles, sort of surmountable, but which I don't seem to surmount. First, the light in my house is yellow. At times of the day there is some nice natural light through the windows, but those times are not in the evening when I cook. In theory I could take my food outside, set it up on a table, and photograph it, but we're going to eat that food and I'd like for the hots to stay hot and the colds to stay colds, and neither to be befouled by bugs, tree matter, or rain. Second, food bloggers seem to know where the best tag sales are because they all have beautiful vintage-y looking pieces in which to display their creations. Last summer, in an attempt to emulate them, I schlepped devoted partner to a dizzying number of local tag sales where we found precisely nothing I would want to serve food on. I've looked at etsy as well and the long and short of it is, these food bloggers either snatch all the good stuff or they're shopping somewhere else.

This is why you're going to get two summer recipes with zero summer recipe pictures (though, theoretically, I am going to attempt to photograph one of them this afternoon in a simple white footed bowl).

In the interest of not infringing copyright-wise, the first recipe, Honey and Spice Glazed Chicken is from Food & Wine magazine. I subscribe and have subscribed to a plethora of foodish magazines and I rip out the recipes I want to try. Then those recipes sit in a drawer. Untried. I don't know why. Similarly, I have a motherlode of cookbooks which are eagerly paged through and then, well, put on a shelf where I like to admire their spines. I don't have an answer to that either. However, I have a plan. Devoted partner and I do some weekly shopping most Saturday mornings. On Friday evenings, we will look over the list of seasonally appropriate recipes and choose two or three to make in the coming week. Successful recipes will then be copied down into a book of some sort that they can be made again and that they can be found again. Unsuccessful scraps of magazine will go to the garbage. See how that makes so much sense?

Anyway, this chicken dish fit the bill on a number of levels including ease of preparation, quickness of preparation, ample flavor, and not at all bad for you (if you don't scarf down the chicken skin). My one caveat would be that the 25 minutes of cooking time suggested by the recipe was a touch on the short side for us. I would have given it another 5-8 minutes.

The second recipe isn't so much a recipe as it is the simple combination of three and a half ingredients to create a facsimile of a dish I enjoyed in childhood that I do not wish to enjoy so much in adulthood as the main ingredient is sour cream and a lot of it. My parent's friend Kayla made a strawberry soup that I could have quaffed by the vat. It's possible that at one time I asked for and received the recipe, but I'm pretty sure it was just strawberries, sugar, sour cream, and heavy cream. With strawberries in their peakest of peaks at the market, I simply had to come up with an alternative. Using two cups of fromage blanc (which is naturally fat free), one quart of pureed strawberries, about 1/3 of a cup of superfine sugar (this should be to taste depending on how sweet you like things), and a quarter cup of (I know this is disgusting) fat free half and half, I was able to come up with a decent stand-in that I felt not at all bad about eating. Oh, and it couldn't be simpler: puree strawberries in blender, add sugar. Beat fromage blanc until smooth, add strawberry puree, add half and half. Chill before serving and slice some whole strawberries into it if you like.

Send Off

It is official. As of 5ish this evening, I will be short one best friend. And it's for such a compelling reason, I can't even be pretend-devastated about it. Best friend and best fiance are embarking on a year long tour of Asia, commencing with a 17-day tour through Mongolia (cool, right?). You can follow their progress along with me, as their travel blogs are now gracing the sidebar, Our Year in Asia and life logistics.

Obviously there is a huge part of me that is wildly jealous. I mean, ask me what I'd like to do with my life and the answer is endlessly travel (ask me about my Helsinki to Cape Town itinerary sometime), and there's a huger part of me that has no idea what one does for a year sans best friend. You see Best Friend and I talk on the phone. In fact, other than relatives, Best Friend is the only person I speak to on the phone. For hours. About nothing.

In preparation for this telecommunicative tragedy, Best Friend bought me a portable Skype phone for Christmas so that I can keep in touch with him as he rides yaks and learns kung fu, but I think our habitual 2-hour long Wednesday calls about who knows what are going on hiatus for a while.

Also, Best Friend is the only person I really go out to dinner with. The Boy and I used to do so, but he works far longer hours these days and is less thrilled to then spend more time in a restaurant. Devoted partner and I generally reserve eating out for special occasions and put our eating out money towards our travel instead. But I do like a good meal. I may have to prevail upon the other two men in my life these next 12 or so months.

But the real reason I can't muster any ill will about this abandonment is that I think it's just so darn cool. I know there are a lot of people who look at a decision like this and have an immediate proto-Calvinist reaction to it: how irresponsible, what makes them think they deserve this kind of thing, why aren't they being like everyone else; as an aspirer to the non-status-quo myself, I applaud my friend and his future wife for doing something they WANTED to do and not contenting themselves with merely the things that are acceptable to want. They were able to do it, they wanted to do it, and as of this evening they're doing it. It takes balls, people, and I think it's fantastic!

We hope to meet up with them along the way, possibly in Southeast Asia, possibly in Polynesia, we don't know, they don't know, and the fact that their schedule leaves so much room open for whimsy and spurs of the moments leads me to believe they will have a wonderful, unexpected trip. One I'll be plotting how to emulate for quite some time.

Nicaragua: They Tell Me It's Not Malaria

When I'm looking for sound medical advice, I generally turn to the nearest person wearing neither shoes nor shirt, in this case Jeff from Brisbane. Using a distressing paucity of indecipherable Australian slang, Jeff informs me that the island's mosquitoes carry neither malaria nor dengue, a small comfort after my night of compulsively shivering and sweating - two symptoms I felt certain meant I had malaria. And, the thing of it was, I wasn't that upset. Until devoted partner disabused me of the notion, I had thought malaria was one of those things you got once and I was quite pleased to be using up my one time - to say nothing of the automatic immunity to sickle-cell anemia. Devoted partner finds it charming when I conflate sciencey things in a most Mrs. Malaprop way. Or at least I tell myself that he does.

I'm not going to lie: this was not one of our better vacations, and the would-be malaria was merely a small part of the reason why. The pictures from the last post? Someone took them in the location we were, but they sure as shit didn't take them in June. We had a little bit of weather. Every day. Now I'm one of those knows-how-to-use-the-internet-to-discover-such-nuggets-as-the-weather-at-my-destination so I knew there would be rain. But the internet told me there would be about an hour of rain a day which led me to think, not unwisely, that this would be rain of the tropical variety: sudden, in the afternoon, giving way to sun as quickly as the sun had given way to a shower.

Not so.

Had it not been for the discovery that every location in the Greater Caribbean (including Baja and Myrtle Beach) was experiencing the selfsame weather last week, this story might have turned out differently because we would have fled the deluge. But stuck with the inevitability of poor weather, we toughed it out. Until the not-malaria hit. Then we were less tough. I was particularly less tough. My not-toughness lasted several days and the aftermath was that my right ear was unable to equalize on land much less underwater. This made diving not on the agenda.

So back to my room, decorated by the team that brought you pretty much every Soviet-era interrogation cell, to lie on the bed and moan a little. There was some diving done, and some sharks seen - a plus - but, and I'm all for benefits of the doubt, it seems we had chosen a poor season to dive as the visibility on nearly every site was closer to soup than I would have liked. Lots and lots and lots of plankton sex.

I had about a day and a half of non-malarial entertainment, hampered only by the searing pain I experienced as I forced myself underwater, convinced that I was just being a sissy and that merely taking a long time to equalize underwater would be sufficient to forestall any ruptured eardrums. And, seeing as I emerged exactly zero times bleeding from the ears, I'm going to say that was a usable theory (until, say, something unexpected happens and I start blogging from the waiting room of the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor). After that, I was struck by the more common form of ailment one encounters in southern countries.

That's right, the tail end of our vacation was spent, for me, at least, both prone and prone to rushing to the ladies room. In defense of the truly spectacular drugs one can get once the FDA isn't sniffing around, whatever it was I took (in Spanish, couldn't tell you) worked almost immediately. Would that the chemist had been opened when the trouble started and that I hadn't had to wait out a night of pretty spectacular discomfort for his shop to open in the morning. Once the "outgoing mail" issue had been settled, I was free to clutch my bloated gut and speculate on what we would name the alien baby I was sure was on its way to joining our family. I have decided (because I believe he is still on the way) to name him: Windsock.

So, yes, there will be details of a non-medical sort, because we did manage to have some fun while away, and there will be pictures as well (rainy, plankton-sex-soaked pictures), but right now I am preoccupied with what color Windsock's room should be and if I am really up to eating the heels of bread in my bag. Please don't feel the need to be extra nice to me for I know in my heart of hearts exactly how much responsibility I bear for carting us off to a third-world island no one had ever heard of with spotty electricity, no hot water, and at the start of the rainy season, no less. Next time I'll listen to the part of my brain that says things like, "Hawaii, swimming pool, cabana boy."

Farewells

Beep....You have reached Yelena and Devoted Partner. We're not here to take your call right now. We are most likely underwater. Or above water. Sweating. Because the Nicaragua is hot in June. Beep.



Beep...You have reached Yelena and Devoted Partner. We are unable to take your call as it appears we have been eaten by sharks. This was, most likely, my fault. I leave all of my shoes to Charlotte. You can burn the rest of our stuff. Beep.



Beep...You have reached Yelena and Devoted Partner. We will be unable to communicate with you due to permanent beach paralysis, a little known malady we have suddenly contracted. Please send money that we may enjoy more beers. Beep.



Beep...The number you have dialled [redacted phone number] is not in service. No further information is available for [redacted phone number]. Please check the number and dial again or call your operator for assistance. This is a recorded message. Beep.

Shopping (Could Be) Fun

So when you are chaperoning Europeans these days, all they want is to humiliate your weak currency by buying things and telling you what a steal they are. Even though the Euro has slipped slightly against the dollar, we are still the current losers in this battle, and never is this more apparent than when your friends giggle at how cheap things are in comparison to their home countries. As such, we've been doing a fair bit of shopping - though in all honesty, most of it has been window shopping. As someone who has recently been confining herself to online shopping (I know - in addition to not being able to braid my own hair or put on eyeliner I also didn't get the shopping gene) so I can't really remember the last time I actually went shopping, like as an activity.

Here's what I have learned from the past two afternoons.

1. Shoe sales are neither all that great a discount nor all that great a shopping experience. It's very Lord of the Flies right now at both Sak's and Bergdorf's, with piles of seriously expensive shoes being tossed around like flip flops while elbows are thrown. No thank you. I don't like paying full price either, but I might confine myself to the quieter end-of-season sales at the individual boutiques where it's less like a rugby scrum (however, should any of you see this shoe in a size 41 for $250 or less, please buy it immediately and I will reimburse).

2. If you are a size above 8, you should not shop below 14th street. There are some really really really cute things and they are for really really really small people. I am not going to make a bitchy fat-ass-positive rant here because, let's face it: hip, young, shops-below-14th-street people are really never going to buy clothing in greater than a size 8 so it makes no financial sense for the designers to make them.

3. HOWEVER, hip, young, shops-below-14th-street people MIGHT have a size 11 foot. I am continually amazed by the number of other women I meet who are 10s and 11s and it just does no one any good if you adorable shoe places don't conform. I tried on shoes that were so small for their size that it was as if I had asked for a size 8. After being implicitly turned away from all stores selling clothing, I was so incredibly ready to part with my hard earned cash for things like this (but in something more like this color) or this or this. But, no, only midget sizes. Sigh. At least devoted partner will be happy - he'd have hated all of these shoes!

4. I want this belt. Leaving aside, for the moment, that since I own no belts, perhaps my first belt purchase should not be a 350 dollar magenta satin belt (this picture in no way does this belt justice - picture the color much much more awesome), can't you just see my in a black dress with this belt? And by "you" I do not include devoted partner whom, while we have never discussed it, I feel certain is not on Team Magenta Satin Belt.

Which leads me to 5. Perhaps shopping isn't such a good thing. After all, the more things I saw, the more things I wanted - for example a 1300 dollar motorcycle inspired navy blue leather jacket. I do not need this thing, nor should I, at the present moment, even consider such a purchase. Much to the designer's chagrin as he patronizingly told me that he could custom make me a jacket (seeing as my ample charms would amply not fit in the sizes available).

Our guests are at Woodbury Common as we speak and I wish them the best of luck in their bargain hunting, but I'm not that sad that they're on this expedition by themselves. My marginal propensity to consume was getting out of hand!

WWCD

It is an unremarkable Tuesday and yet I am wearing a clean dress, high heels, and hair spray. I have mascara on, and lip gloss (with liner) and perfume. My eyebrows are plucked and my underarms smooth. This is not normal.

But something has happened in my bathroom and in my life and I cannot ignore it. A new crop of beauty products have arrived and, once utilized, they shame my lazy ass into shape. They are the beauty products of the beautiful and graceful woman who is staying in our guest room with her husband, the dearest friend of devoted partner. They are merely her travel beauty products. And the fact that her travel products and my permanent products were equal in scope has given me pause. I know I've written about this before and it's something I truly struggle with: how does a girl on a budget manage to do all the girl things she's supposed to while also saving for retirement? Well, I'll admit that after only two days of sharing my bathroom with C, I no longer care how much it costs, I'm willing to join the cabal of adult females who bathe and anoint regularly.

And yet, C is effortlessly beautiful. Whatever it is she's doing in my bathroom she's doing it with a light hand. I have mentioned as much to her and then she pretends she doesn't speak English. But she addresses one of my major concerns with doing one's self up which is that one tends, then, to look done up. And I don't like looking done up. From a vanity perspective, I think it ages me, and from a social perspective, I tend to think it cheapens me. C just looks together. Like someone who just spent an afternoon on a boat and got some color. Like someone who doesn't look at the act of face washing as a chore.

She has also renewed my commitment to spending the summer in dresses. Yesterday she wore, literally, a hoodie dress in a simple grey heather. She looked phenomenal. Perhaps the ridonkulous and covet-worthy red leather jacket dressed it up, but I saw her in the morning, before the jacket came on.

So I'm going to try, even after she leaves (and we are sad), to embrace more heartily the idea that 20-30 minutes in the morning is not going to kill me. After all, I've been flossing, and losing that 2 minutes hasn't radically altered the happiness in my life. Besides, my hair is looking really incredible and that doesn't happen when I just comb it and put it in a ponytail.