(Jing & I in red & pink. Only one of us looks lovely in this photo…)

I hope Jing doesn’t mind that I stole this photo from her facebook album. I’ve known Jing since she was maybe three and I was maybe seven. And now I’m definitely twenty six.

Tomorrow, I’m attending the IFB Evolving Influence conference & I have no idea what to wear. I’m not really an outfit planner, but I am a last-minute stresser. Is a fashion blogger conference like any other conference? Should I dress professionally? Can I wear a midriff baring bustier top if I feel like it?

There’s so much more to look forward to beyond tomorrow’s IFB conference. I’m excited for the Renegade Blogger meet up that Rebecca so kindly organized, and I’m super excited to meet Jasmine, Jen, and Starr at various points throughout the week(end.) I’m attending the Chictopia conference on Sunday as well, even though it conflicts with the Brooklyn Book Festival, and I’m sort of planning on ducking out on a few panels to try and see if I can’t say hi to John Ashbery with my mom in tow.

Speaking of my mom, she took this photo of me the morning after my Hilton rooftop soiree. She’ll be helping me pick out an outfit for tomorrow. If you see me at any Fashion Week events, please say hi! I’m more weird than shy, (I think) and most likely more than half my outfit will consist of shoes and accessories I pilfer from my mom’s closet tonight.

Love, Jenny

I think it would be strange to run a fashion blog that doesn’t acknowledge the labor that goes into making clothes–both beautiful and butt-ugly clothes (I won’t name specific brands, but I know we’ve all had a moment of, “This piece of garbage costs $120, and they still couldn’t pay their workers more than $2 a day?” or “Awesome, my ten dollar jeans ripped down my ass after wearing it three times.)  I know this isn’t news to anyone with even an inkling of knowledge about where most of our clothes come from, but a lot of this labor is shameful — whether its jeans made in prison sweatshops right here in the United States, or the omnipresent “Made in Indonesia/Bulgaria/China/insert whatever developping nation where cheap labor can be exploited for textile and clothing production” for an article of clothing that seems suspiciously cheap and most likely, poorly made.

I spent a good chunk of my Labor day weekend indulging in some Roman hedonism and play (more on that later or maybe never,) and the rest of it was spent with my parents’ very painful Shiatsu back massager and rereading Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory by Mariam Ching Yoon Louie, and Nickle and Dimed by  Barbara Ehrenreich. Both books are not perfect books, and there was something particularly disturbing about the public’s embrace of Ehrenreich’s expose on how it’s basically impossible to afford shelter, food, and basic living needs on a minimum wage job in America, because it seemed like another instance of the American public having a collective, ‘Wow, I had no idea!’ moment, even though low-income folks and people of color have been saying for AGES that they can’t get by on minimum wage. Why does it have to take an educated, wealthy, white female author to pose as a minimum wage worker before people will listen? Black Like Me, anyone?

But that said, Ehrenreich’s book itself is a good one, and she approaches her unusual situation of artificially slumming it for a few months for the purposes of research and engagement with grace and sensitivity and complexity. Louie’s book is a really necessary and good book and makes a lot of really important points often missed by the liberal activist message–namely, the importance of local and community organizing.

And as for how I spent part of my Labor Day… I was anxiously making my teenage dreams come true!

I used to sneak out of school to make periodic trips to the East Village and the Lower East Side, often by myself, dressed in my big, platform combat boots (that were from Delias and I secretly hoped noone would out me for it) and usually an old dress of my mom’s that I rescued from the trash. I liked to go into Screaming Mimi’s and Other Music and walk up and down St. Marks hoping that some punk kids would notice me (or whoever I thought was a punk at a time,) and one time I was sifting through used CD’s at Kim’s Video and I found a copy of Outkast’s Stankonia. I was pissed when I got home because I had accidentally gotten the EDITED version (Tipper Gore, you fool,) and so for a year, I knew the words to every song on Stankonia except for the profanities.

Last night, I saw Big Boi at the Brooklyn Bowl. I got there way early and staked out a spot for myself up by the stage. I was so nervous and trembly and anxious for Big Boi to start his set that I ended up peeing eight times in two hours, and each time I came back from the bathroom, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to push my way back to the front.  Big Boi was amazing. The best part of the night was when his son rushed out to the stage to dance for us while Yelawolf flipped his side mullet to the other side of his head during ‘You Ain’t No DJ.’ If you’re wondering what this has to do with fashion, I will show you with a series of photos:

Bullshit that Andre 3000′s guest track isn’t on the record. (Photo and omitted song can be found on Punchbowlblog)

Andre3000 at the launch of Bixby, his freaking awesome clothing line.

Right, participate in democracy, but more importantly: wear PLAID SUSPENDERS ON GINGHAM WITH A CLASS-A BOWTIE IN YOUR MOUTH.

LOVE.

Love, Jenny

Now, I’m no celebrity, not by a thousand meter long shot, but Laura was sweet enough to invite me to be part of the grand launch of I-Ella next week during New York Fashion Week. Some of the things I will be listing with I-Ella include my green Swedish Hasbeens jodhpur ankle boots, a cashmere Built by Wendy sweater with heart buttons, lace-up Frye boots, and a really beautiful Alexandra Grecco onesie that I’m sure most of you have seen on the beautiful Hannah Metz and the less magnificent me (the one I’m selling is made of a berry cotton fabric.)

And of course, there will be even more impressive closets on sale than mine. Membership to I-Ella is totally free, boys and girls, and you can sign up here.

I also had a little bit of time that same day to stop by Fort Mandate and crush on (Big Pun stylez) all of their beautiful playsuits and two pieces and dresses. Carissa, the mastermind behind Mandate of Heaven is a genius, I think. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera so I could have shown you the inside of her studio/workspace/showroom. It’s all mint green walls and playsuits hanging from the ceilings and flower crowns all along the walls and stacks of vintage trunks and satin shoes and adorable kitties. Her partner Ariel is the nicest too. He made me a cocktail and played lots of Nirvana, and the whole time I couldn’t help but think of Kurt Cobain’s dresses (thanks to Meggy’s post!) and wonder why Courtney Love sent her daughter so many unhappy tweets on her daughter’s birthday. I wore my Mandate bustier top with the loveliest ruffle trim (it’s the top to these bloomers!) and sweated my way through Bushwick & the occasional DAMN YOUR FATHER KNEW HOW TO PRODUCE A FINE LOOKING CHILD (and me forgetting that street etiquette is to ignore, ignore, ignore, and instead directly responded with: Um, I’m on the phone with my dad right now actually, do you want to tell him yourself?) to get to Fort Mandate. It was so worth it.

Thanks for taking my customer photo, Mandate!

I ended up buying a pair of mint green shorts with mushroom pockets from the Opiate collection, their line of organic playsuits that are all hand made or produced in a fair-trade labor environment (no sweatshops=HOLLA!).

My mom took these photos for me before I left on an epic three hour bus-subway-subway-ride to the West Village to meet my friends Karan & Anna for some Baba ghanoush at La Moustache.

Next time, I’ll get her to take a booty shot of the mushroom pockets on the back of the shorts. I’ve had insomnia for several months now, and I could probably carry a small pea in the bags underneath my eyes. (See photo for proof.) In third grade, someone told me about my bags, and I was like, “How could you fit a bag underneath your eye? And where does it attach?”

Despite carrying bags from insomnia, and having nightmares that unfold into more nightmares every night, I’m really happy. I’m getting a sore throat and tomorrow a hurricanes a-coming, and I’m happy. Something really amazing happened today, and I’m happy. I ran around the house screaming and high fiving the walls because everyone was gone from the house, except for my brother and he doesn’t care if I run around in my underwear, screaming and high-fiving furniture.

Lastly but most importantly: your comments and your support and your readership of FFW makes me happy. Maybe we can organize a virtual puppy-pile hugging party so I can tell you how much I appreciate you (and how much I like puppy-piling.)

With love,
Jenny

]]> http://fashionforwriters.com/2010/09/03/359-love-post-i-ella-mandate-you/feed/ 5 unhappybarber 59423_431426244293_746314293_4885050_5331133_n 58943_431426164293_746314293_4885049_6982012_n IMG_4814 IMG_4826 IMG_4830 IMG_4827 http://fashionforwriters.com/2010/09/02/358-dior-dior-dior-dior-who-cares-who-cares-who-cares-fashion-is-dumb-anyone-who-spends-any-amount-of-time-thinking-about-it-is-a-brainwashed-idiot/ http://fashionforwriters.com/2010/09/02/358-dior-dior-dior-dior-who-cares-who-cares-who-cares-fashion-is-dumb-anyone-who-spends-any-amount-of-time-thinking-about-it-is-a-brainwashed-idiot/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:10:53 +0000 Jenny Z. http://fashionforwriters.com/?p=3377 Read more]]> Hi everyone! I just wanted to post the longer, original version of my Guardian blog post. Thanks to Minh-ha for alerting me that my Guardian post on Dior was included in the Business of Fashion Daily Digest. It was also picked up by The Atlantic’s blog, (The Atlantic Wire,) even though it seems like the consensus in the comments section is anything that happens in the fashion world is a ‘non-issue.’ Awesome. It’s not as if clothing and appearance have EVER had anything to do with the history and contemporary practice of racism, sexism, or classism.

I know my manner of writing is sometimes unnecessarily prolix and long-winded and lapses into rant and tangents. I don’t plan on changing my way of writing for anyone, and at the same time, I don’t expect everyone to want to read my writing, or to want to read so many blog posts on Dior, but I wanted to post the longer version of my Guardian article more for myself, so I can remember all the ideas I was fumbling with at the time when I was trying to write a follow-up to my original post on the Shanghai Dreamers campaign.

Some of the ideas ultimately cut from the final article include the time John Galliano used Masai fertility symbols as heels, and the time Marc Jacobs designed a bag for LV that looked exactly like the bags that Ghanaian refugees carried out of Nigeria, and also the bag that Chinese migrant workers use to lug their stuff.

So here it is in it’s glutted, unabridged, orotund glory:

What haute couture fashion can and can’t tell us about China (and the rest of the world.)
by Jenny Zhang

Given the history of Orientalism in Western sartorial practice, is it any surprise that Christian Dior’s latest ad campaign, “Shanghai Dreamers,” shot by Chinese artist, Quentin Shih, features a series of photos where a strikingly-styled white model clad in Dior couture towers over rows of digitally reproduced Chinese women and men dressed in Cultural Revolution drag? And no, your eyes have not deceived you—the Chinese people in the background literally all look the same.

The photos are a stark reminder that shameless Orientalism is still accepted in fashion. Edward Said writes in his seminal book, Orientalism, “The Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience… The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture.” (By the way, the Oxford English Dictionary truly ought to list this photo under the entry for ‘Orientalism,’ but I know the chances are as slim as the United States including itself for once in its annual Human Rights Report.) What better way to affirm the modernity, individuality, and exceptionalism of the West than with the very material of Dior clothing on a white model contrasted against a backdrop of undifferentiated Chinese people in dated clothing?

Dior, true to form, since unveiling the campaign last month, has not acknowledged anything problematic about the display of these images on the windows of their Shanghai storefront.  After all, this is the same Dior whose head designer, John Galliano, sent shoes with carved Masai fertility symbols as heels down the Spring 2009 runway. Galliano declared the collection, “tribal chic,” one of those fashion buzz terms employed in articles that refer to the “African influence” on fashion as if Africa were a single country or tribe or culture. Fashion’s cavalier nonchalance and the mainstream media’s lack of response to fashion’s racial provocations might lead one to think that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with white models on a European runway quite literally stepping on the backs of an African tribe’s religious symbol.

Of course, fashion has always blithely forged ahead with little concern for blatant cultural appropriation (see: the past twenty years of Galliano’s fashion career) or cultural appropriateness (see: images of colonial and imperialist splendor in the return of plantation chic and harem chic.) But can and should they continue to get away with it?

Just last week, China’s economy surpassed that of Japan’s to become the second largest in the world. Business Week reported LVMH (Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton) SA, the company that owns Dior and LV among others as the world’s largest maker of luxury goods, saw a 53% rise in returns in 2010 so far, with a leading 21% sales gain in the Asian markets.

In considering Asian consumers, it would be wise to have less fashion moments like the Shanghai Dreamers ad campaign, or the plastic red and white plaid bags Marc Jacobs designed for LV in 2007, since that exact bag has long been carried by Chinese migrant workers, as well as Ghanaian refugees from Nigeria seeking asylum. But then again, fashion designers are not in the habit of actually learning about the places they take inspiration from.

Take Karl Lagerfield’s admission last December, “I haven’t left the hotel since I arrived in Shanghai, not that there is much of it left over,” before debuting a short video he directed, in which a fictionalized Coco Chanel visits the Shanghai of her dreams. It is precisely nothing more than a dream, because in what other reality could 1960’s Chinese labor camp workers possibly be played by Danish supermodel Freja Beha and Lagerfield’s French muse Baptiste Giabiconi? In one scene, Lara Stone as Coco Chanel enlightens the two actors in yellowface that “the Chinese invented quilting,” followed by one of the Chinese laborers lamenting, “I much prefer to have blue jeans.” The message couldn’t be clearer—the Chinese are ignorant of their own history, desire to imitate the West, and need a cultured European to educate them.

My reading of the Chanel film might seem hyperbolic until you take stock of the similarities between images in fashion portraying China and Chinese people as inscrutable, ignorant, backwards, jejune, and robotic, and the rhetoric currently employed by pundits who are predicting the Chinese do not know how to handle their growth and will inevitability crash and burn if they don’t change course (aka follow Western conventions.) The West is both transfixed and utterly horrified by China’s rapid development, and the fashion world, as much as it would like to see itself as the final frontier for nonconformity, is no different.

Whatever you think of China’s human rights record, economic policies, politics, culture, or social conditions, old-school racism just can’t fly. The mainstream media needs to put pressure on Dior to apologize for their embarrassing Shanghai Dreamers ad campaign. But they have been silent, with the exception of Art Info, who focused most of their critique on the photographer, Quentin Shih. Shih, a native Chinese artist, born in 1975, has gone on the record to say that the ad campaign was entirely his idea and that he meant no offense.

I believe his intentions completely, and had these photographs been presented in the context of an art gallery with other contemporary Chinese artists, the cheekiness and the humor of the replicated bodies would have come through. The blame is not to be shouldered by Shih, who is an artist and entitled to the contradictory, messy, ideologically unbound expansiveness that we crave in art. Rather, the blame is to be squarely placed on Dior and Galliano who should know better than to commission these photographs for their Shanghai storefront, who should have sent Chinese models for Shih to shoot, and who should understand that the modern Chinese Dior customer will not recognize herself or himself in these photographs.

The blame is also to be placed on the media and the fashion world for so openly accepting racism in fashion, whether it be genteel or overt. If fantasy is part of the appeal of fashion, then wouldn’t it be worthwhile for Dior, Chanel, and other couture houses to figure out how Chinese people fantasize and see themselves? Surely, the vision does not include wearing a Mao suit, carrying a migrant’s work bag, and dressing exactly like everyone else.

.

And because I mean no disrespect to the work of Quentin Shih & feel terrible that there was possibly more backlash against him than against the house of Dior, & to add further happy complication to the question of authorship, intent, messages in art, and the art in messages, I’d like to include this kick-ass photo from an editorial he shot, “Stranger in the Glass Box,” as part of his first collaboration with Dior.

(Photo from Trendland.net)

With love,
Jenny

Marc by MJ dress

Today is my first day on the new job, and I’ve been looking forward to it all week — this morning I’ve been eating curry and drinking a latte and filling out the last of the paperwork that I’m supposed to bring into the office. And, of course, changing in and out of outfits. I was wearing a 40s silk blouse and black pencil skirt combo, inspired by Francesca’s gorgeous blouse collection, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. Eventually I changed into this Marc by Marc Jacobs dress that I bought in 2006. At the time, it was the most expensive dress I’d ever bought, and still is (with the exception of my wedding dress, which really wasn’t all that more pricey than this one). But it’s held up well, and most of the time putting it on makes me feel like a winner.

As you can see, our apartment is still in disarray. We don’t have all of our furniture in yet, including the two Ikea bookshelves we ordered in an attempt to keep our library in check. (The entire right half of the living room is filled with boxes of books.)

FFW seems to be going through a stage of transition, as well. Jenny’s going to France soon, and I’ve been working on my own blog, which deals more personally with issues of writing, as well as thoughts on living well with mental illness. We have more readers now than ever, and comments that make us oh-so-happy. We’ll just have to figure out where to go next with it all.

Thanks for being rad.

xo,
mw

Sometimes I wake up from dreams so banal and ordinary that I forget it was a dream. For example, the other night I dreamed I texted my friend about a frisky car ride, and the next day on the phone, I referred to my dream texts, and he was so confused. I think I dreamt that I wrote a blog post about going to the Renaissance Faire in Iowa, (see what I mean about banal dreams that are so lowly and lacking in magic that they feel more like memories than dreams?) because I went to delete these photos from my ‘blog’ folder and I suddenly realized that I had never shared them with you in the first place.

I’m wearing my favorite Gunne Sax dress in the above photo and a pair of espadrilles that I gave to my friend Eli before leaving Iowa. I bought the Gunne Sax dress from a thrift store in San Francisco in 2005, and I’ve probably outgrown it, but I can’t bear to part with it because I’ve had some of my happiest days and nights in that dress. Like this day, when V, K & I went to get brunch at Boogaloos, and V was wearing this kick ass sweater from Wasteland, and the metal eye of Mordor hadn’t yet fallen off of my tooled purse.

I had a really happy day when I wore this dress to the Ren Faire. My friend Tal came too, and she’s going to be a very famous writer very soon so you better remember that name and that face! There were a lot of nubile women in faux-corseted velvet and lace dresses. There was a dreadlocked dog (so non humans can also do cultural appropriation, huh?) One dude spent the entire Ren Faire laying on his back and pulling out clumps of grass. I spent it eating cannoli’s and greasy fast food renamed as some mixed-up Medieval pun that ought to have offended Ren Faire purists.

With love,
Jenny

Talking about shopping is sometimes a depressing subject for me. I can’t help but feel enervated and shameful afterward if I think, discuss, or do too much of it, but it also seems disingenuous to completely avert from shop-talk when I’m posting outfits and talking about clothes all the time on this blog. So here goes.

Two weekends ago, my parents & I took my cousin and my auntie to the Woodbury Outlets in upstate New York to find some comfortable walking shoes. My mom got some really beautiful Miu Miu flats on super clearance, my cousin & my auntie found sneakers for each of them and some work attire for my cousin’s new law internship (congratulations!) and I did what I always do, try on a bunch of things I know I can’t take home with me and then come up with imaginary fancy scenarios where I could wear the clothes, like say what if I had to attend a Midsummer’s Night Dream-themed party with the cast of Jersey Shore? Then surely, I would need this slightly trashy-dress-but-at-the-same-time-diaphanously-elfin-dress-with-a-push up-bustier-top-and-wispy-skirt-bottom! Or what if Werner Herzog wanted to host a Labor Day barbecue with me? Wouldn’t I have no choice but to buy this white crop top and these high rise jean shorts with a weirdo ruffle trim from this tiny boutique in Chinatown?

I’m sometimes able to talk myself out of getting something and sometimes my mind is as weak as a dried leaf. My cousin suggested I take photos of the clothes I tried on. I know tons of bloggers post dressing room photos, but the thought of doing it on this blog used to make me feel violently ill. But whatevs. Here are some photos from the French Connection dressing room:

Teal dress in a thick knit cotton with two gold zippers running down the side. I liked it a lot, but I knew deep down I’d like it a lot more if I could have Kim Kardashian’s booty stapled onto mine, and who knows when they’ll invent that technology.

Another dress in the same thick knit cotton. Basic bodycon style, but as a plus, it didn’t have a thousand arrows pointing out my pancake ass.

I was crazy into this dress because it made me feel one step closer to JWoww and Snooki’s style on Jersey Shore, which is one part HELLO BREASTS and one part HELLO BOTTOM HALF OF MY ASS. If I sound as if I’m trying to be clever or ironic or funny about my admiration for Jersey Shore style, (especially in that ‘Even though I’m praising this thing right now, I actually have a lot of ironic distance from it and it’s clear that I’m smart and refined and for those reasons no one would ever pity me for liking this thing, which is why it’s so hilarious and easy for me to proclaim my love for this thing,” that I think a lot of people are good at, and surely myself included,) I promise I’m not!

I once tried to organize a Destiny’s Child listening party in my freshmen year dorm room because I loved their music that much (my favorites were “Bills, Bills, Bills,” “No, No, No,” and “Say My Name,”) and I put up little dinky posters encouraging everyone in my dorm to stop by for the listening party, and then these other kids in my dorm were totally enraged (perhaps in a joking kind of way and perhaps in a serious kind of way) because they thought I had taken my little Destiny’s Child joke too far, and put up rival posters for a Bob Sagat viewing party and sabotaged my Beyonce plans and afterward, I wept a little bit for Beyonce because I had no ironic distance.

This is the kind of dress I always want to have in my closet–a simple, floral, tent dress, but I always pass it up in favor of something flashier. It’s like how I always want to get imperial rolls with vermicilli at Vietnamese restaurants, but then I can’t help but get the pho anyway because I think it’s fancier and harder to make myself, but in truth I wouldn’t mind eating an imperial roll every now and again, and I wouldn’t mind having a dress like this, but I passed it up once again.

I did get the black shoes I’m wearing in all of the pictures Do you like them/sorry for the blurry.

I wore these insanely wrinkled scalloped shorts and a 50′s canary yellow shirt that has buttons too small for the button hole so I was walking around clutching my chest all day and the shoes are Toms and the scarf says Coca-Cola and it’s vintage from my momma.

All right, it’s time to sing karaoke songs no one else likes/knows.

Love, Jenny

I had to scan some old photos for a forthcoming publication and I thought I would share these two photos from a Tiananmen Square protest in New York’s Chinatown. I guess you could say back then, my father and his friends were intellectuals. Most of them came to the States in ’86 or ’87, when China was letting students like my father and his friends immigrate to the US to pursue masters degrees and Phd’s. They all studied literature. All of them had completely memorized several books of English literature and could recite at will (or boredom.) One of them had memorized the entire Webster dictionary (whatever tattered version he had back in China,) and when he got to New York, the first store he walked into was a bagel store and he was utterly befuddled because ‘bagel’ had not yet made it into the super old 1960′s copy of the English dictionary that he had in his possession, and he went nuts for several days trying to track down the dictionary definition of ‘bagel.’

I’m not sure why my parents let me go with them to this protest. My dad and his friends made signs and tied rags around their heads to symbolize their solidarity with the students–alive, injured, and dead. I wanted to tie a rag around my head so badly because I didn’t want to be left out and I thought it looked cool. My mother thought it was too gruesome for a child to walk around with faux-bandage around her head but she let me hold up this sign which mentioned spilled blood and our country’s conscience. Everyone was in dark spirits and everyone was also surprisingly/unsurprisingly lonesome for home.

I saw grown men crying in the streets, which scared me into a shyness that up until that point in my life, I had only previously experienced on the day a family friend accompanied me on a trans-Atlantic flight from Shanghai to NY to reunite with my parents. (My father went to NY first and then my mother and then me, two years later.) I’m thinking a lot about my family right now because I’ve been home with my family these past few weeks and I love them. I will be a scared, shy mouse when I fly to France in a month. And I’m thinking a lot about China because a lot is happening right now in China, and a lot has changed and a lot hasn’t changed for China and as usual, the mainstream media’s coverage of China has been disturbing me to no end.

I’m also thinking a lot about protest and anger and how I haven’t participated in enough of either, lately. But I’ve always been shy and tentative about anger. My best friend Hanzhi was also there at the protest with his dad–they both ended up on the front page of a local Chinese newspaper looking very solemn. I wish I had the picture of him and his dad. Hanzhi and I also flew on the same flight from China to NY and didn’t know it until a year later when we became best friends. People in both our families want to think of it as an incredible coincidence but that’s just what happens when you become close to someone–suddenly, it feels like you are connected in a thousand million astonishing ways and you can hardly believe that you didn’t know each other sooner.

My dad is the crazily slender, handsome guy second from the right. My friends would tease me about having a hot dad and once I punched my friend Lata in the butt for threatening to flirt with him and that kind of ended our friendship right then and there. Although, sometimes I would still go over her house for rotis and samosas.

I promise I won’t disappear for two weeks again. I’m here now.

Love, Jenny

Chris and I just moved into a new apartment, which has meant nabbing wireless from neighbors — it’s only yesterday that we got some Internet of our very own. My apologies for the quietness around here, which has been driving me stir-crazy as well; I finally got some writing done yesterday, which was better for my brain than I ever could’ve imagined. Not that these days haven’t been pleasant enough. I’ll be glad, though, when my apartment is actually a place where we can invite people over. I’d like a love seat. Maybe two.

xo, mw