The Devil Wears Anthropologie

As I eat this cheese bagel I would like to check in with you all. Here is an update on my little life.

- I am working as a personal assistant temporarily for my friend Jen (Fifi LaRoo). She is great. She has tons of cool stuff from beloved Anthropologie so I often just sit and marvel at her beautiful house. We like to eat bagels and drink Starbucks coffees and file things and watch Cold Case Files. Well, I like to watch Cold Case Files...Jen sort of suggests each day that the show is creepy and maybe we should change the channel but I won't hear of it. Dead little girls are scary...but seeing how detectives sold murder mysteries is cooooool.

- Jen has a patootie little puppy that is half lapsa-apsa and half shitzu named Clark. He is so funny and sweet and I kind of love him. Except I don't love when he diddles on the floor. Jen says not to yell at him when he does that, only to praise him when he goes in the little doggy pee pad box thing. So instead when he diddles on the floor I pretend like I am really really sad. I whine and cry like a puppy. It's an old trick I learned from Lucy. When Lucy was a kitten and she would play too rough I used to hiss at her...mostly she just found it confusing, but she also would stop. Clark seems to think it's sad when I cry so I just point to the poo or the diddle and cry cry cry. I'm going to do this with my kids one day. When little Brannen Jr. craps his underoos I'll just throw myself on the ground and weep hysterically. That'll learn him.

- I'm still reading Mary Lincoln. I love that crazy bat. It was slow going for a while cause I was moving and distracted...and honestly the White House Years were a little boring except for the fact that she spent ALL the white house budget on new clothes and decorations without Lincoln ever knowing. Now things have picked up a little and she and Tad are travelling around Southern Europe visiting spas. If I remember my history correctly I think little Tad's hourglass might be running out pretty soon but I'm not sure. Either way, this is the best book ever. I wish I'd read this before my friend Olivia and I toured the Lincoln house in our stovepipe hats in college. Mary Lincoln rules, in spite of and maybe because of the fact that she's a total (as Michael Kors referred to the recently axed Millan Breton on this season's fabulous Project Runway) "wackadoo".

- My taste buds are changing. I ate the fish. I loved it. I ate Walleye Pike with my birthfather Jim and he's going to be sending me the pictures soon. But, I also like the following things that I've always detested:
Guacamole (Kris! All our Chipotle dreams can come true now!)
Blue Cheese
Chik-pea Corn Dogs
Crab Cakes

- The war wages on between Lucy and Dimmy in our new house. Lucy seems to have claimed all the rooms...and all the people...and all the toys...but Dimmy is still fighting for...um...the little space under the end table. There was a terrible cat scream/hiss/growl in the middle of the night and I heard Erik wake up and mumble something about "Sending both of you to the sausage factory" but otherwise it's been pretty peaceful.

- Last year people told me that I was really hard to shop for on my birthday...so I'm putting the list out now. Here is the top ten list of what I would like for my birthday this year.
1)ipod (although I might be buying Jen's old pod at a discount, whee!)
2)bathrobe (i think mom has this covered, since I've been asking for one since I was 10. Once she gave me one for Christmas but it was just a picture of a bathrobe in a box and she said we'd go get one later which we never did. It's not that she's a bad mom, it's that she then had to lend me money so Christmas became more of wash.) Anyway...Mom...big and fluffy and pink.
3)A fake ponytail, a really long one.
4)Pottery Classes at the place by my house
5) Silver/jewelry/welding classes at the place by my house
6) Yoga classes (beginner..cause um...I'm about as bendy as a steel beam right now)
7) A beautiful collar for Lucy that says "Lucy"
8) A fabulous umbrella, a really big one, with polka dots, or clouds, or...well, you pick it out.
9)A cute, nice, funny boyfriend
10) Anything from Anthropologie

There you have it.

-Speaking of birthdays, Happy Birthday on the 18th to my cutie pie face mommy who turned 60! EW! Mom wore a fabuous black ("It's not Black, Boo, it's Midnight Blue!!!") dress and a little Betsey Johnson wrap and a really pretty bracelet that some darling daughter of hers bought for her. (It was me! It was me!) She had fun and her party ruled. I wore a blue strapless dress so Lisa and Trixie were in charge of hoisting it up for me as I drank more and more. Mom has awesome friends and I think they all had a good time. Yay! Then since Mom is the one who taught me about double birthdays (one big party on the closest Saturday, then one little outing on the actual day of) she and stepdaddy Jim went to Charlie Trotters for dinner. I haven't heard anything about it, but I'm sure it was yummers.

- Chicagoans will understand this more than others...when I go to Jens each day I have to get off at the Merchandise Mart stop. The first day I was late to work because I was lost INSIDE the Mart. That is the most confusing building in the entire city, with no signs or anything. Ugh.

- Pants and shoes are the hardest things in the world to buy. I hate them both so much that I have often shed a frustrated tear or two in the dressing rooms and while looking at the little foot mirrors in shoestores. Having giant freaky feet and a giant booty make shopping for anything besides shirts and dresses miserable. So if anyone with big feet or bog booties have any shopping tips...fill me in. I suppose a totally misproportioned body is an obvious outcome when you are the product of someone who is almost 7 feet tall mixed with someone who is only just 5 feet tall. My little sister has my exact body but on a much smaller scale and then our other little sister just looks like Keira Knightly. Brat. At moms party my shoes suddenly didn't fit anymore so I just threw up my hands and said, "Forget it" (Although "Forget" was actually a different "F" word) and went shoeless all night. Which was dangerous for a couple of reasons, 1) Due to my "condition" I'm not supposed to get cuts or infections on my legs and being barefoot along with using a razor to shave are two big Lymphodema no nos that I continue to ignore. 2) Some of the people at the party were a little, um, Marthastewartish...and they clearly didn't approve which was irrelevant to me since there were so many more people who thought I was spunky and fun.

Ok Poodles. The cheese bagel is long gone, so it's back to the grind. I will be back more frequently now though, so keep reading. Ciao.