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Thursday, May 27, 2004 ( 8:34 PM ) Girl Detective Delayed, then hopelessly lost I was in England last week for a friend's wedding. I got in Thursday morning prior to the Sunday wedding. I had only two things I wanted to do while in London. I figured I'd work them in around helping my friend prepare for the wedding. On Friday, I offered to do the stationery run. She needed gift bags, gift wrap, cards, ribbon, balloons, and takeaway bags for chocolate. Feeling clever and confident, I avoided the tube lines with delays. I got off at Wallace Street, then walked down Tottenham Court Road first to Confetti, then to Paperchase. I found all items, though had some trouble deciding on cards. Carrying the large, heavy bag of wedding swag, I determined that I'd probably be better off walking to my next stop, the Persephone Books shop, one of my two must-visit places. (The other was Jo Malone, which I'd visited earlier, where I bought Fig and Grapefruit colognes, plus Nutmeg/Ginger bath oil and some gifts.) I first heard about Persephone on Chicklit. They're a small publisher that resurrects titles by or about women and prints them in new, lovely soft cover editions. Each title has a unique end paper pattern selected from classic textile prints. I bought several books for gifts, and my husband eventually surprised me last Christmas by ordering some for me. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is the story of a down-on-her luck woman who goes to a job interview and gets far more than she could have imagined. It's charming and funny and reminiscent of a 30's mistaken identity movie. The Home-Maker is more serious, about parents whose roles are reversed when the father has an accident and the mother takes a job outside the home. I found its analysis timeless as I wrestled with my own decision to continue to work or to stay at home. I made my way past Russell Square and the British Museum and was warmly greeted by Nicola when I arrived at the shop. I had planned to purchase only three Persephone titles: Hostages to Fortune because it's about parenthood, Miss Ranskill Comes Home because I like the yellow rose pattern of the endpapers, and The Blank Wall, because it was the basis for the James Mason movie The Reckless Moment, which was remade more recently into The Deep End. I left the shop, however, with six books. I also purchased Greenery Street, a book about happy marriage, for myself and my friend. Additionally, after I'd shared with Nicola that I had a 9-month old baby boy back in the States with his dad, she recommended Little Boy Lost, after reassuring me that it would not be too upsetting. Newly encumbered, I set off for my friend's house. In addition to the stationery bag and the bag of six books, I had an overstuffed handbag, which contained, among other things, a breast pump, City Secrets London, Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd, and a gluten-free sandwich bun. When I finally made my way onto the Piccadilly line, there was standing room only. This was difficult with my many bags, and made more so when they announced that we had to disembark because the train was unsafe. The rush-hour platform was already crowded, so I moved back to the wall. A woman complained loudly to the tube staff person that it was the third delay that week. A portly, older gentleman with a round, fruity voice admonished her that she shouldn't be complaining to the tube staff. The problem, he noted to all within earshot, i.e., everyone on the crowded platform, was Bush. I sighed, embarrassed for my country. He went on that Bush and Blair were spending their countries' money on illegal wars instead of public transport. He and the complaining woman crammed themselves into the next train, but I waited for the train after next, on which I got a seat. I exited the tube station and called my friend, who said it was a 10-minute walk past some shops. Arm-sore and exhausted, I walked, and walked, not checking the time because to do so would stop forward momentum; I'd need to put down the bloody great bags in order to check my watch. Finally I called, lost. The traffic from the road was so loud that I couldn't hear, so the mobile was useless, or even worse, because it kept ringing and answering it meant juggling bags and still not knowing where the hell I was. I did eventually find my friend, or rather she found me. I'd missed the turn to her street and blundered into the next post code. | Wednesday, May 26, 2004 ( 7:10 PM ) Girl Detective Accessory du jour What was the most au courant accessory in evidence at the English wedding I just attended? Blackberries, a.k.a. Crackberries. To their credit, the guests (and bride) who had them weren't using them. Much. Though if the wedding had been the day before, concurrent with the F.A. football final, I think there'd have been more a struggle. | Tuesday, May 25, 2004 ( 8:37 PM ) Girl Detective Up is down, black is white,
I'm just back from England, wherer I was for my friend Chrestomanci's wedding. My husband and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, so he stayed home with the baby. Yes, the English drive on the left side of the road. There are helpful notices at each street corner directing pedestrians which way to look. But even if one isn't driving, it's easy to be disoriented. Or run down. I had trouble walking about on sidewalks and tube stations--foot traffic follows the same pattern. I had to walk on the "wrong" side to avoid collision. Tube stations were particular congested and hazardous, as they are mostly filled with harried, hurried Londoners. The wedding was in the country--more about it later--so much car travel was required. Two friends quite capably handled the driving duties, for which I still feel a surge of gratitude. I had a difficult time navigating on foot--a vehicle felt quite beyond my capabilities. | Monday, May 24, 2004 ( 6:52 PM ) Girl Detective Where in the world was Girl Detective? Just back from England, where I was for a friend's wedding. I'm exhausted, and happy to see the baby even though he's crying himself to sleep. More later this week. | Monday, May 17, 2004 ( 8:48 PM ) Girl Detective Shopping Styles; where's the quiz? If you read other people's blogs, you'll see an astonishing array of quizzes. It's like Cosmo gone mad. What personality type is your blog? What book/movie star/sitcom character/world religion represents you as a person, blah, blah, blah. I thought of the quizzes the other day when I went shopping at an outlet mall in Albertville, Minnesota. I had a specific task to complete, I'd identified the store, found it was only at the outlet mall, and finally found time to schlep 45 minutes out there, only to be reminded why I am not an outlet girl. There were hundreds of stores, and RVs parked at the edges of the lots. Outlet malls are all about having cheap depth within narrow stores. The store we visited was no different. It was crowded with parents and babies in big strollers, with grandmotherly types who kept grabbing tags and saying "These are such good prices!" The racks of clothes were so close that it was difficult to navigate, even without a baby in a stroller. (My husband had the duck in the Baby Bjorn.) I was looking for something basic and couldn't find it in the size I needed, so kept having to look at other crowded racks of stuff that I just didn't want. It all gave me a headache, but we did what we needed to do, and got the hell outta there. I shop like a princess. I want nice stuff on racks or around aisles that are clean, tastefully done, and easy to navigate. And I want the stuff to be in my size, by a designer I recognize, and at least 40% off the original retail. Even better is an additional percentage off a markdown. I can do a Marshall's, or a TJ's, but really my ideal is a good department store having a great sale. I don't need a quiz to tell me this but I think it's worthy of a quiz. What kind of shopper are you? In-n-out? Catalog? Outlet? High-end discount, like Saks Off 5th? Discount stores like Kohls and Target? High end department (Neiman's, Saks), middle (Bloomingdale's) or lower? | Thursday, May 13, 2004 ( 8:40 PM ) Girl Detective Trixie Belden is back! And I found her at Target, of all places. There they were, four of my favorite books ever, in brand-spankin' new hardcover editions, starting with The Secret of the Mansion. The blurb on the back introduces Trixie as a 50's heroine, so they're not trying to tart her up for today's teens by modernizing her. How they would modernize things like a brother named Mart, "jeepers!" and Bob Whites of the Glen is certainly something to ponder. The cover art is pleasingly retro, striking a good balance that shows that Trixie isn't a modern gal, yet she doesn't look _that_ different. I'm so pleased she made it back into print. I hope the young geek girls of today come to love her just as much as I did. | Wednesday, May 12, 2004 ( 7:11 PM ) Girl Detective Not Real, Not Simple I've written before that I think Real Simple magazine is a sham. It's all pretty pictures of stuff that ostensibly makes your life simpler, but that's suspiciously expensive and complicated. For example, what's simpler? To stock up on candles, wine and other items for hostess and other last minute gifts? Or to politely opt out of tchotchke dumping and instead be a gracious guest with your behavior? My junk mail filter informed me that I'd received yet another solicitation from them. I can't block the address, because they're doing sneaky things with the sending address to prevent that. I don't know how they got my email, but I went to their site to get myself taken off. I checked all the right boxes and then was told it would take a month for me to be removed from their list, the list of other Time Warner magazines, outside vendors and a fourth thing. If Real Simple were really simple, it wouldn't be sneakily sending spam, taking too long to undo mail lists, and selling email addresses to all and sundry. Bah. | Tuesday, May 11, 2004 ( 9:36 PM ) Girl Detective The siren song of mediocre movies My friend Michael says there's no such thing as a bad sports movie or a bad teen movie, because even when they're bad, they're good. He's wrong, of course, but he makes a good point that there can be good things about bad, or just not-great movies. Mediocre movies don't require much investment. You put them in, enjoy them for what they are (usually a by-the-numbers genre pic) and then you're done. I've watched very few movies since I had the baby almost nine months ago. Of the movies I've watched, many have been mediocre. And not by accident. I'm tired. All the time. So mediocre movies seem to be about my mental pace, plus they're usually short. But in the end, they don't satisfy. Lately we watched DVDs of The Italian Job and Shanghai Knights. They were fine. They had their moments. But they are utterly forgettable. And Shanghai Knights was about half an hour too long for how slight it was, so its length undid much of its potential charm on me. School of Rock was somewhat better, as was the third Matrix movie. But they weren't great. The other night I was finally up for something substantial. We watched Miller's Crossing. It was violent, it was cynical and it was over 2 hours. And it was really good. I miss really good movies. It's hard to work up the gumption to see them--the time, the energy, the mood if they're dark or depressing. Subsisting on mediocre ones, though, is like living on fast food. One could do it, buy why would one want to? | Monday, May 10, 2004 ( 12:00 PM ) Girl Detective Hey, lookie! I've got a comments feature now. Please use it with reckless abandon. | Sunday, May 09, 2004 ( 9:18 PM ) Girl Detective We interrupt this mothers day.... I moved to Minnesota from Philadelphia in June of '98. I was unpleasantly surprised to find huge uprooted trees wherever I looked. I'd known to be prepared for bad winters. Bad springs and summers, though, felt more than a little unfair. Last night, I'd just begun the bedtime ritual for the baby when I heard the sirens. At 5:25 p.m. the weather channel said we were in the path of a severe storm and a tornado had been sighted. We had a few minutes, so I grabbed my purse, the new Greg Rucka novel, the diaper bag and some chocolate, then made sure my husband had a backup of my novel and the computer. We put the baby in the stroller than went down to the basement of our building. The warning subsided at 6, we went back upstairs and the baby was asleep by 6:30. | Wednesday, May 05, 2004 ( 9:35 PM ) Girl Detective It's the texture, stupid I've tried a lot of moisturizers. Both ones I've bought as well as samples I've received. I've tried expensive ones from Neiman's, and cheap ones from Target. For nearly all of them, the verdict is the same: Fine, and doesn't seem to do any harm. I've tried Clinique and Clarins and Lancome and Estee Lauder and Dr. Hauschka and Sisley and Neutrogena and Nars and Aveda and even Creme de la Mer. I could never see a difference. My skin didn't look bad, but I couldn't lie to myself and say it looked any better. There were differences, many in smell. The Nars smelled great, like fresh citrus. The Lancome and Clarins smelled too strong, as did Aveda. And I just didn't get why people gush over Creme de la Mer. It was fine. Nothing more. There was one product by Sisley, the elixir, that did make a difference. It wasn't a daily moisturizer, though, and it costs quite a bit. Other than that, though, there have only been two moisturizers that have held my attention. One is Darphin's Arovita C, with a citrus scent and whipped texture. I scraped every last drop out of my sample jar and have never managed to summon the chutzpah to spend the $150 or so on a a full-size jar of it. The other is Shiseido Bio Performance Super Advanced Revitalizer. At $65 a jar, it's not an outrageous splurge. It has a light scent, and I'm not convinced that it does make my skin look better. What it does do, though, is make my skin feel better. When I put it on, I feel moisturized. It has a plush, creamy texture that's not at all waxy or greasy, as I felt the Creme de la Mer was. Its tone is a soothing pale pink. And so I will buy it again. What distinguishes a cream, then, is less what it does, or purports to do. It's about how it makes me feel. The color, touch and smell of the Shiseido is comforting. I'll pay $65 a jar for that. | Tuesday, May 04, 2004 ( 7:23 PM ) Girl Detective Guilty pleasures I watched the second season of Newlyweds on MTV. I'd read that the first season was funny and even when I realized that the second season was forced and not so funny, I watched anyway. It took me a while to figure out why, but I realized that I could relate to Jessica Simpson. Yes, she's a child bride, and a pretty blond pop star, while I'm old enough to be her mom and consider myself an intellectual, but aside from those.... OK, well the differences are large and obvious. I kept watching because sometimes I say dumb things. Sometimes I feel dumb. Sometimes I feel like I'm completely a frivolous impractical princess type and the only thing tethering me to reality is my nice husband with his Lutheran values. So I watched Newlyweds and secretly cheered for Jessica, and sympathized with her silly moments. I found it strangely liberating to celebrate the ditziness. And the vicarious shopping was not bad either. | Sunday, May 02, 2004 ( 8:40 PM ) Girl Detective House hunting My baby started crawling two weeks ago, so we called our realtor. We went on our first round of house hunting yesterday. I'd forgotten a key element to making it go smoothly: wear slip-on shoes, since most houses, at least here in Minnesota, have a sign requesting guest to remove footwear. I wore sneakers. Whoops. We saw five houses. One looked good at first, but the entire house sloped alarmingly downhill. Another had nothing to recommend it. One was so well updated that I was trying to rationalize it, even though it was way too small. One had hardly been updated since it was built in the 40's, but was so well-kept that it was charming, not alarming. And one was a very close fit. Except that it had sold that morning. House hunting is nerve wracking. And we've only just begun. | |
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