This post is dedicated to Junot Diaz, who deserves mad props for sneaking Bartleby references into all of his writers, no matter how much he tries to convince us that his narrators are idiotic sucios. Hope I used my Spanish correctly. It’s also dedicated to the Vivian Girls, whom I saw last Friday (hope I used ‘whom’ correctly,) and they were so charming, so sweetly attentive to their own charmingness that I even have to forgive the bunghole who tried to start a mosh pit by ramming his head into other people’s backs (including mine.) I wish I could do something equally absurd and mind-boggling to him. Like, maybe I could show up at a gutter punk show where he’s happily moshing and force him and everyone else to sit down and politely eat a watercress sandwich with a fork and knife. Would you like that, annoying mosher guy with an outrageously large head?

Will you look at how adorable the Vivian Girls are?

Last year, around this time the temperature was in the twenties and thirties. I think I may be uncharacteristically in denial of the warmth. I’ve been foolishly bundling up in my winter coats and boots while everyone else is in shorts and spring cardigans. This makes me feel old, especially when I remember how my great grandmother used to wear two shirts, a sweater vest, a cardigan, and two pairs of pants in the middle of July, and how my grandmother would try to get me to bring a coat to the beach. Yesterday, I finally lightened up and took my Swedish Hasbeens for an inelegant walk around town. I’m preparing a huge Etsy update for Wednesday, and I’m terribly excited about this week’s listings. Spring coats, including a lovely trench, summer frocks, and a pair of Candies high heel slip-ons that I nostalgically wrote about a few months ago!

Reformed striped shirt, secondhand jean shorts, ruffle socks from mom, Rayban sunglasses, flower clip from Gina, Swedish Hasbeens Peep toe Super High, The Believer tote bag from my old job.

Love, Jenny

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (to 287: Ho! and 289: White Bedsheet dress)

Minh-ha: I’m curious to see what sort of rompers/playsuits you have in your closet. I wish all rompers came with a detachable peeing flap.

Jin: Hi Jin!! For work & play hopefully.

Andrea: That very nightmare happened to me at the tender age of 7! And for years I wondered, why oh why did my mom make me wear a corduroy onesie to school? Now here I am, attracted to them once again.

Alli: Thank you for your super sweet note! I’m definitely willing to take a chance on accidental nudie bathroom situations for the sacred romper.

Starr: One hundred ♥’s for you and to you.

Kris: Thank you–if only I really was at peace.

Jocy: I’d love to see your collection of white dresses!

Meghan: Thanks, girl! That lamp is the only nice bit of furniture I own.

Fruitful: Your comment made my day! I don’t think my connections are often satisfying to others, but I’m so happy to know that they make sense to you.

Agneta: I love your footprint traces on this blog–it’s wonderful.

Nina: Thank you so much.

Hannah & Tieka: We should all pool together our innerlight savings and dip into them when needed.

The few times I’ve worn this white dress: a car drove past me and splashed filth water all over me, a person who was a stranger to me did something medium to very diabolical to me, a teacher of mine whispered two secrets into my ear and I whispered one fake secret back, and I went to a dance party where I felt safe because it was dim. I love this dress because it reminds me of bedsheets, which I am a fan of, especially messy bedsheets you are too tired to sort out before bed. I like reading a book in bed and falling asleep and then waking up in the morning and reaching for something and finding the book and realizing that you had slept next to a book all night. It’s a Good Thing, which according to the movie Fresh, also means like a bodacious, slammin’ babe you’ll never have a chance with.

Also it’s the start of Daylight Savings, yes? I’m happy about that, I suppose, but what I really wish is that we could have other kinds of savings, like how about Innerlight Savings? Anytime you become lackluster and less than dazzling, you could just dip into your Innerlight Savings and ta-da, that little dim orb inside you would suddenly be radiant and resplendent once again.

Love, Jenny

Okay, okay! No more wedding photos after this, I swear! Chris and I went back and forth about wedding favors — we didn’t want to do any corny magnets with our photos on them (sorry if you did this), or mugs with JULY 18, 2009 on them or whatever, so instead we went thrifting and dollar-store shopping and picked out things for giveaway tables at the end of the party. Each item had a tag on it with a hand-stamp; I’d ordered a custom two-bird date stamp from Etsy, but it didn’t arrive quite in time, so we ran to Office Depot the day before the wedding and bought one of those fancy-schmancy office stamps.

All photos taken by Tara Arrowood.

xo, mw

Hi,

This is Michael in Berlin two summers ago. He’s a poet, and sometimes, he takes pictures for this blog, and when I’m around him, I spoonerize my words. For example, I might say, ‘Man, I hate the cold so much, I can’t wait for winter already!’ and he’ll be like, ‘Winter?’ and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah. Oh no, I mean Spring.’

His poem “Ho!” (with an exclamation mark that is five times as big as the word ‘ho’) was published in a Slovenian poetry journal, Poetikon, and this is his author photo, which I took in Berlin after I had a curry brat and he had a beer, and I tried to help row for five seconds, gave up and flopped around  like a fish before eventually settling down to take photos of Michael rowing the boat for thirty minutes while I sang songs and spoonerized. We also saw a swan who glowed and looked greedy and decided that this swan was my doppleganger.

~~~

On another note, I’m crazy into these new watercolors that Hellen Jo painted and posted up on her blog. Ever since I found this silly terrycloth romper in a thrift store in San Francisco five years ago, I have been steadily amassing playsuits and rompers despite their many flaws–having to strip buck naked just to use the bathroom, needing to have excessive immodesty if you ever want to squat somewhere to pee, my excessive peeing needs, and general peeing obstructions that wearing a onesie causes! But there are so many benefits: never flashing your friends, getting to sit Indian style on the grass because of the aforementioned never-flashing, the desire to show off any and all aspects of physical limberness when in a playsuit!

I’m also really digging this watercolor by Hellen Jo, because what’s not to like about girls in 80’s glasses and animal miniskirts, who will CUT you if you glance at them wrong?

~~~

Seeing pictures of Meggy’s new San Francisco digs is making me antsy for my new home in the Fall. I think I am moving to France, or somewhere in Europe, but I’m not certain, which is why I feel foolish even mentioning Europe, but now I’ve gone and done it. Spring break starts next week but I’m going to be here in Iowa City. The week after, I’m leaving to go to Shanghai with my family (mom, dad, Johnny) to see my extended family. There’s some family things that have been weighing on me lately, and I wish I could be with them right now very much, but I’m also feeling lucky we’re all going to Shanghai and soon, I’ll be eating ten meals a day and playing mahjong with my grandmothers and visiting my grandfather’s grave which is just a little tiny square locker, in a room filled with thousands of little square lockers, which you open with a combination lock and inside are his ashes and some of his favorite things like bananas and his watch that he wore for a good number of decades.

Love, Jenny

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (from Jenny) to 285: The salutary benefits of being a gadabout

Districtofchic: I wish I could physically handle that accordion book and see how it’s made. I bet it’s exquisite.

Starr: I’m so so so so happy the package arrived to your door safely! I’m sorry for my dinky packaging skills and I can’t wait to see how the dress looks on you (I bet gorgeous!) Re: Europe, I’m 90% sure I’m moving there, but gosh, here’s to hoping I’m don’t become a coward and decide to do something else.

Vintage brown dress (1385), vintage bandana-beaded necklace (gift), grey tights from wherever, Naturalizer pseudo-oxfords

One of the very nice things about my trip West this past week was finally getting to meet and spend a few days with Francesca (The Snail and the Cyclops) — a major treat, complete with tacos and mimosas (not in the same meal) and thrifting! And I bought this brown dress from her, too, which has been getting a lot of wear, and I think I might wear it to an important meeting next week, too. It has a huge pocket on the side, as well as a bow, which you can’t see very well, I’m afraid.

This month is comprised of waiting, waiting, waiting, and I’m not very good at that. I remember that Elizabeth Tallent once told me that when waiting to hear about writing prizes and things, that the best thing to do was just throw oneself into the work, to really write and write, and I’m trying to do that, but I get distracted by thinking about finding a job and packing up all of my belongings and making the big move to San Francisco in early May. I feel impatient about everything; I just want to stamp my foot — “I want it now!” (I want a feast!/I want a bean feast!) But it’s the now that’s important, and so I make my espresso and drink my kombucha and enjoy the warmish, above-freezing temperature while it lasts. What I really want right now is to find my little sewing kit so that I can mend some of my old dresses, but I can’t find it for the life of me, though I did find a little plastic container of soy sauce, and that wasn’t what I was looking for at all, at all.

xo, mw

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (from Meggy) to 284: Carrot Cake

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Try the recipe — you won’t regret it! And you can make it multilayered, too, which we didn’t do because of time constraints, but the more carrot cake, the better, is what I say…

When I was a tot living in Shanghai, I had a blue dress that was so long that it trailed four steps below me when I walked up the stairs, and I also had a bowl cut, no eyebrows (shaved for ritual reasons,) and a red bouncy ball that was taller than me that I once tried to throw off the roof of my grandmother’s apartment and my mom was like, Are you crazy, you’ll kill five people with that thing. I’m going to visit Shanghai in a few weeks, and this weekend, I took a two-day workshop on visual poetry with the book artist/visual poet Pamela Moore. She’s amazing. She made that above wooden accordion book with gum birchromate photos and this below bestiary which houses medieval beasts. I think if I ever wanted to run a bestiary, it might be a good idea to pump some iron first.

I’m making a zipper book of Michael’s poetry and also mine. If one day I grow to be brave, I’ll show you what it looks like. Until then, I’ll remain cowardly like the father from Hansel and Gretel who still somehow manages to enjoy the spoils of his children’s cleverness, despite abandoning them in the woods and being way too into his nasty wench wife.

Have I mentioned the label Minnie Wilde, now defunct, a San Francisco label I loved so much back when I lived in San Francisco and walked down 24th street every afternoon trying to seduce myself into buying cheek and tongue tacos from the outdoor taco stand on Treat Street, which I called Tree Street, after a guy named Tree who ran a community garden and for years, I thought his name was Treat? Here is a dress from their ‘Stevie Nicks wears short dresses’ collection (my imposed name not theirs):

I’m wearing these Marc Jacobs wedge boots that I’ve had for years. I never wore them until I got to Iowa and then suddenly my feet cried every day because it was so cold, and these boots have gotten me through three Iowan winters, and hopefully a much milder European winter next year. Michael told me I need to stop putting myself down, so here goes going against nature.

Coat & dress from Minnie Wilde, Marc Jacobs boots, Erase Errata bag from Erase Errata show in San Francisco, sunglasses and tights from wherevs.

Love, Jenny

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (from Jenny) to 282. Will you help me?:

Thank you everyone for your help! I ended up wearing a combination of all three… kind of. And thank you to everyone who ever comments on my mindblob-mindblot posts. It means a lot to me. I don’t know how to say more without being even more of a blot of a blob.

I am going to share this top-secret recipe with you (it was emailed to us and transcribed from an old recipe card). So bake and eat with gusto, and don’t skimp on the frosting!

CARROT CAKE

In one bowl mix:
1 cup corn oil
1 cup sugar
4 eggs

Beat at high speed for 3 minutes.

In a separate bowl mix:
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Then combine all the ingredients including carrots together and add the flour last.

2 cups all purpose flour (add a little at a time)
3 cups carrots (grated)

Grease and flour the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 25 minutes.

Icing:
1 box of confectioner’s sugar
1 stick of butter
1 large Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Mix together and add pecans last.

(Love, Mom)

xo, mw

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (from Meggy) to 283: Our Wedding

Catherine: I’d love to see your photos!

twistofdynamite: Thank you! I could go on and on with photos, but I thought I’d spare everyone…

mordicai: Indeed. I still remember Jenny’s gorgeous dress.

Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist: I haven’t been to that many weddings, but I hear that they can be insufferable. Every time I buy a dress these days I think about whether it’s wedding-appropriate… is black okay? Cream?

Jenny: You have the happiest expression on your face, and it looks like you’re doing that fantastic jumping dance move that you do!

Leigh: Yay!

eyeliah: We were lucky to have a lovely photographer. Thank you!

The Clothes Horse: Chris was really big into the wedding being FUN, so we tried our best to make that happen. Oh, and we also wanted to make people cry. Fun and crying and cupcakes!

Eline: Thanks so much!

Diana: Thank you!

Maskenlady: Hurrah! Thanks for the kind words.

But before I get all sappy and sentimental, like I haven’t already, look at this amazing photograph of Jenny and me dancing like the crazy, excitable, wild-haired beings that we are. Okay, so you can’t really see much of me except for the back of my fancy coif and my low-backed wedding dress, but JENNY IS AMAZING.

So there’s one more Wedding Post that I want to make that is just pictures of the decor, because everyone did a smashing job, as far as I can tell, in terms of getting together antiquated stuffies (like an adorable octopus with a sailor hat who sat with the cupcakes) and old books and little toys. Plus, pictures of Chris’s heirloom cufflinks. Maybe more pictures of Jenny dancing, if the demand is great enough.

xo, mw

For some reason,  I started reading William Blake poems from Songs of Innocence. In one poem he writes:

Little Lamb,
Here I am;
Come and lick
My white neck;

Okay Mister Blake, I will.

Nonsensical quoting aside, I found this little Marc Jacobs spring cardigan at the secondhand store and I love it maniacally even though it’s really not suited for me. It’s suited for someone who actually brushes her hair, and remembers to paint all ten of her nails, not just the five on her left hand, like uh, I did today. Oops.

Also, if you are up for it, will you help me choose something to wear tonight to a reading and after party? Or don’t help me and let me learn some self-reliance.

Outfit 1: weird beaded tan top (from Topshop) and floral rope skirt with exposed zipper and over the knee boots.

Outfit 2: even weirder gold and black mesh bodysuit (sorry crotch for abusing you) and secondhand tiered black lace skirt and buckle boots.

Outfit 3: same weird gold & black mesh bodysuit with blatant Like a Virgin-era Madonna skirt and buckle boots.

The buckle boots because you can’t see them at all in any of the photos : [[

The last two black skirts are skirts I wore to death when I was in college and when I lived in San Francisco. I have some pretty good memories of flashing various people at various dance parties in these skirts. The rope skirt is from this pretty cool label Peeps. Help?

Love, Jenny

(By the way, we are switching up our posting schedule this week because Meggy is busy eating tacos and vintage shopping and loverly lover loving in San Francisco. That lucky duck. But we’ll be back to our regular programming next week. At least there’s above 30 degree weather to enjoy all week in Iowa for me.)

Today I read Don Quixote in one sitting, deseeded an orange with my teeth, safely removed peeling paint and wallpapered the house with a love-soaked glance, translated Tender Buttons into Chinese, and revealed metaphors of racism and oppression in our everyday lives so stunningly that many people wept real tears. Just kidding/I wish. Sometimes the camera falls to the ground because my tripod is over 15 years old and my parents got it as a result of an elaborate scam, which tricked us into thinking we were getting a ten-day Bahamas vacation, and I told all of my friends at school that my family was going to get $200,000 and a free Caribbean vacation, and some kid, the one who always knew more than everyone else (like the difference between a wiener and a wiener,) was all like, Yeah but how about taxes? And I was like, Huh? And in the end, all we got was this tripod that sometimes tips over.

This skirt is really old, I got it my first year of living in San Francisco, which I am missing a lot after looking at Meggy’s San Francisco pictures. It’s a vintage Alice Roi skirt if that means anything. It was the first thing I’ve ever paid to get dry-cleaned. The lady running the dry cleaning shop loved me and tried to get me to consider dating her son, who was apparently ‘very tall and can cook good Chinese food,’ ignoring my boyfriend at the time who frequently came with me into her shop. Another time, this lady who was mopping the floor in my town’s Burger King came up to me and asked if I had a boyfriend because she thought I would be a great match for her son in marriage and didn’t I want to be with someone who was getting his Masters in Business? That story ended sadly because the manager fired her on the spot for talking to me too much and not mopping the floor. Well, I don’t know what any of this means.

(Outfit: Teal sweater from clothing swap; ruffle sweater from somewhere; Zara buckle boots; vintage Alice Roi skirt; coat from Shanghai; Saddle bag from somewhere; scarf from India.)

Love, Jenny

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

REPLIES (from Jenny) to the last two posts:

Catherine: Oh dear, Twilight. I showed the trailer for the third Twilight movie in class to make some point about writing fiction, which I now regret slightly. And what does being ‘wall-eyed’ look like? I’m intrigued!

Jessica Sue: We should really form a club and ostracize those who shriek at our double-jointedness! Just kidding, kind of.

Jen: I’ll trade you my double-jointed arms for your ability to wear cute shoes in cold weather. Except I can’t actually give you my arms for a day–I’m reluctant to give them up!

Eline: Yes, they are crisps like the kind you can get in a bag, except I think they make them by hand! And so they are extra crispy and delicious.

Amy: I love yellow too, even if it doesn’t love me that much. I’d very much like to be treated to a viewing of what your arms can do.

Rhiannon: Yes, let’s form an I Had Scoliosis as a Kid Club! I never had a back brace because every time the doctor at school suggested it, I would just run away and cause a commotion. Or somehow trick my parents into never making a follow up appointment. I was so terrified of getting a back brace, which is why I have terrible posture now.

Starr: Ha, I was afraid the studded booties would be too much. I don’t know why but whenever I wear my studded booties I always fear someone will come up to me and say, ‘Why why why are you wearing those shoes? You look ridiculous!’

Sally: Sadly, I am the sole possessor of this dress, but you should check out Caramelized Vintage’s Etsy store if you like the yellow dress. She has tons of cute things.

Everyone: Thank you for your sweet comments and reassuring me that my arms are not freak arms. Even though they are. And I love that you all know so many double-jointed people. I’ll show you how far my arms can bend and my bizarre fingers another day….

Violet: Latin homework is an admirable and lovely endeavor, and thank you so much for your kind comment. It made my day! It more than made my day, in fact, I think it made me feel as if I was walking around with the warm sun on my back, even in the evening when it became cold and slippery again. What kind of writing do you do?