Ziggy Azalea: Stellar Spring

This afternoon, I stepped out onto my front porch to fetch a package and discovered that . . . the azaleas are here!  The azaleas are here!  The azaleas are here and, with them, finally spring!

That's all.  You can go back to what you were doing.  

And perhaps enjoy your own garden of the galaxy. 

Love Lessons: Girl World Unfurled

When I opened Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You, I wasn't sure what to expect.  Even if I did gain an inkling from the thought-provoking post on Ivy & Ellie.  I was cautiously excited (if that's even a thing) because I'd loved Normal People.  Still, I sensed that this book would be different.  And I was right.  Sort of.

Alice and Eileen have been best friends since college.  Now in their late twenties, both are ladies of letters, Alice as a famous novelist and Eileen as a small-time magazine editor.  They also write letters to each other, long, scholarly-sounding emails lamenting the evils of capitalism and their guilt about caring about their love lives more than global warming and starvation.  Although World has the trifecta of elements commonly featured in women's fiction, i.e., man woes, job woes, and family woes, we're not in chick lit land anymore.  I'm not going to lie; the letters are a little tedious and sometimes hard to take.  Nevertheless, I can't deny that they're special.  They show what a close friendship these women share and are endearing in their honesty.  I wanted to write to Alice and Eileen myself and say, hey, the weight of the world isn't on your shoulders.  And therein, I think, lies Rooney's point: being young is a painful business.

Yet despite their torment, both Alice and Eileen dread growing up.  It takes them a long time to realize that the end of adolescence can be the beginning of everything else, freeing them from the pressure to be perfect.  In other words, the beautiful world has been there all along, but they've been too troubled to see it.   

That's the thing about this book.  Even as Rooney ever so gently satirizes her heroines, there's never a doubt that she feels for them, or that their angst is any less real.  If anything, she wants them to get past the demons that plague them, to accept themselves -- and the world -- as they are.  And as lofty and remote as this book sometimes is, it doesn't get much more poignant than that.  It's why Alice ultimately reverses her position on love, deciding that despite -- or because of -- all the hurt in the world, love isn't trivial, but all there is:

"So of course in the midst of everything, the state of the world being what it is, humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another email about sex and friendship.  What else is there to live for?" (146)

So Alice is a closet romantic.  Which isn't too far off the mark from chick lit.  

Put that in your vape pen and smoke it, Bechdel Test. 

Primarily Pink

Bag: Betsey Johnson, Macy's

Top: Candie's, Kohl's

Sunglasses: Wild Fable, Target; Headband: Gifted; Love bangle: Boscov's; Other bangle: Mixit, JCPenney

Skirt: Trixxi, Kohl's

Big Black Bow Necklace

Top: Hippie Rose, Macy's

Fabulous Felt Pink Piano Barrettes

Shoes: Madden Girl, Kohl's; Socks: Amazon

Sunglasses: Michaels; Charm bracelet: Mixit, JCPenney; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon; Bangle: Mixit, JCPenney; Other bracelet: Cloud Nine, Ocean City

Pink Lady Necklace

Legwarmers: Gifted

Once in a Pink Moon Necklace

Top: Delia's, Dolls Kill

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's; Choker: Ella & Elly, Zulily; Bangles: Mixit, JCPenney; Sunglasses: Target

Skirt: Tinseltown, Macy's

The primary colors are blue, yellow, and red.  But sometimes I think of them as blue, yellow, and pink.  The pretty primaries, if you will.  So I put together some pink outfits to go with my new pink necklaces and staged them with blue and yellow backdrops.  And it was a blast.  Even when the backdrops came tumbling down after I left them up overnight.  That'll teach me to try to sleep between photos.  

Anyway, there was also a pink surprise in store for me this week: these lovely trees, which I saw at the post office.  I especially like how they're forming a kind of arbor over the newspaper dispensers.  The pink really sets off the stark red and blue, a cartoonish commentary on how the natural world coexists with our manmade one.

Then again, if that were truly the case, then the dispensers would be choking the trees by the roots.    

Sorry, day after Earth Day.  I tried.

Easter Aftermath: Hats Off to Whodunits

Easter may be over, but the leftovers remain.  And not just that giant chocolate Easter egg or wedge of ham pie in the fridge.  Also Leslie Meier's latest Easter installment, Easter Bonnet Murder.  Despite what the title suggests, the victim wasn't strangled with the ribbons from an elaborate millinery creation.  Nevertheless, the actual murder was even more bizarre and disturbing.  

When reporter Lucy Stone is assigned to cover the annual Easter bonnet decorating contest at Tinker Cove's retirement home, Heritage House, she doesn't anticipate drama.  But infighting among the residents, possible Medicaid fraud, and the disappearance of a loner bird watcher have her holding on to her proverbial hat.  Heritage House is supposed to be a refuge for the old and infirm, and Lucy wants to keep it that way.  But someone lurking behind Bingo nights and pudding breaks has other plans.  And it's up to Lucy to stop him or her before it's her head on the chopping block.

As always, it wasn't the book's whodunit, but the everyday observations that really interested me.  I was particularly taken with the idea of decking out Easter bonnets (no surprise there), although I wasn't keen on the competition.  The mean (old) girls at Heritage House are the same as those found in any school or workplace, as Lucy herself muses while making dinner:

"What was it with women, she wondered, taking a package of ground chicken out of the fridge and dumping it into a bowl.  Why can't they just lead their own happy lives, why do they have to scheme and plot against each other she asked herself, dumping in the breadcrumbs." (101)

You said it, Lucy!  And that's why, for me, solitary artistic activities are where it's at.  

Or, to put it more bluntly, stay sexy keep crafting and don't get murdered.

On Hats and Hams: Easter Feaster

Eggs: Spritz, Target

Mint bangle: Decree, JCPenney; Turquoise and celery bangles: Burlington Coat Factory; Yellow bangles: B Fabulous; Lilac bangle: Don't Ask, Zulily; Bag: Current Mood, Dolls Kill; Purple bracelet: Etsy; Heart ring: Delia's; Flower ring: Seahorse Designs, Etsy; Necklace: The Tote Trove

Dress: B. Darlin, Macy's

Shoes: Chinese Laundry, Amazon

Top: So, Kohl's

Shoes: Jessica Simpson Collection, DSW

Necklace: Betsey Johnson, Gifted

Bag: Betsey Johnson, Amazon

Dress: B. Darlin, Macy's

Belt: Marshalls

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Bag: Amazon; Striped bangle: Miami accessories cart; Thin orange bangles: B Fabulous; Chunky orange bangle: Mixit, JCPenney; Ring: Old Navy; Barrettes: The Tote Trove

Green fascinator: Amazon; Pink fascinator: Gifted; Yellow fascinator: Modcloth

It's Easter, and that means another parade of hats and dresses.  Ensemble number two -- yes, you, blue! -- is the winner going to Easter dinner.  Mostly because it includes long sleeves.  (April or not, it's cold out there!).  Sorry, pink and yellow; better luck next year.    

Yes, Easter is unpredictable, and not just the weather.  I'll never forget the one when my mom gave my sister a Babe DVD before we sat down to our ham dinner.  My sister wasn't a vegetarian then, but she is now.  Coincidence?  I think not.  

Hopefully, no surprises lurk in your Easter basket.  

Happy Easter!  Happy spring!  Happy, happy everything!

That comes from the heart.  Also, Hallmark.  

Tit for Tat and All of That: Wife Lessons on the Marriage Carriage

When forty-four-year-old Amy O'Connell's husband Hugh tells her that he's leaving Dublin to backpack through Southeast Asia for six months without her and their three daughters, she doesn't know what to say.  Sure, Hugh's been shutting her out since his father and best friend died one after the other, and she's worried.  But will experimenting with a -- gulp -- open marriage for half a year really solve their problems?  Or just create new ones?

That's the question in Marian Keyes's latest, The Break.  Things would be easier if Hugh had a history as a cad.  A wandering eye, a terrible temper, or even just a parsimonious spirit.  But he's the kind, dependable man who made her believe in love after her awful first marriage -- and enrolled her in the cheese of the month club.  Despite her daughters, her job as a celebrity publicist, and her suddenly Internet-famous mother, life without Hugh is still a slog, and Amy can barely get out of bed.  So when her sister suggests that she reconnect with the crush she quashed a year ago, she doesn't dismiss it.  What ensues is sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, but always complicated and real.     

Much more than an introspective Irish Hall Pass, The Break has all of the sparkly somethings that make Keyes's fiction addictive: snarky humor, madcap shopping sprees, and big, crazy, blended families.  It also examines the conundrum of being both the woman scorned and the other woman, of wanting to even the score but also forfeit.  In this way, it reminds me of some of her earlier novels, particularly Sushi for Beginners and The Other Side of the Story.  It's an absorbing read for anyone, married or not, but will ring truest with wives.      

The Break clocks in at six-hundred-and-sixty pages, but from the very first chapter, time flies.  You won't care about the (time) commitment, but instead be caught up in that old Ladies' Home Journal column of a question: Can this marriage be saved?

One, Two, Tree Looks: Black and White Brights

Bag: Tatty Devine, Modcloth

Shoes: Mix No. 6, DSW; Socks: ?

Top: Freshman 1996, Macy's

Bangles: B Fabulous; Ring: Wet Seal; Necklaces: The Tote Trove

Jeans: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Headbands: INC, Macy's

Bag: Olivia Miller, JCPenney

Rhinestone Remix Necklace

Top: So, Kohl's

Sunglasses: Betsey Johnson, Zulily; Leopard bangle: JCPenney; Red bangle: XOXO, ROSS; Ring: Miami accessories cart; Barrettes: SHEIN

Skirt: Decree, JCPenney

Brilliant Buttons Necklace

Shoes: 2 Lips Too, JCPenney; Bag: Guess, ?

Skirt: So, Kohl's

Ring: Express; Rhinestone bracelet: Target; Rose bracelet: Francesca's

Top: Current Mood, Dolls Kill

Piece of Fake Necklace

By now we all know that I deem color king queen.  But sometimes nothing beats a black and white canvas to make it really pop.  So with that in mind, I put together these gray scale-based outfits and then piled on the neck candy.  I made two of the pieces by upcycling rhinestone necklaces that belonged to my aunt.  It's fun to find new stuff to use in my jewelry; if it's already in the house, then even better.  

Speaking of home, the cherry tree in the first pic is at the edge of my backyard.  Although the husband and I have lived here for more than four years, I was surprised to see it in bloom.  In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I never noticed it -- or maybe I did and thought it was the neighbors'.  Anyway, I'm grateful that life is slower now so I can appreciate it -- and all the other beautiful things that have always been at my doorstep.

This doesn't, however, extend to the pair of mangled underwear at the edge of the front yard.  

We live on a busy street, near a bus stop.  We see things.