PEARLS & AMBER

SHOOT FROM THE SHOE

Okay, I am filled with worries and questions and doubts as to just how effective carrying my pistol on the heel of my shoe could be--

I've always envisioned carrying a pistol, a small, jewel encrusted pistol, in a vintage beaded bag.

I have the beaded bag.  I don't have the pistol.

I don't have the pistol because, OF COURSE I don't believe in owning firearms of any kind.  But I also don't have a cute little pistol because someone informed me, lip curling, that pistols are ineffective if I actually intended using it...for protection, that is.

I didn't dare inform this person that I merely thought of carrying a pistol in a vintage beaded bag as a kind of a hipply irreverent thing to do.  If I was actually carrying an effective kind of gun, well, that might have moved into edgy, and while I admire those women who have the energy to be edgy, I am not one.

But the whole myth was destroyed for me the minute I was informed--it was a stormy day, cold, and very very edgy--that the kind of pistol I had in mind was a silly, girly, indeed useless, piece of equipment.

I see.

So, now comes Lagerfeld's show.  Certainly I stopped at the photos and stared.  My fond notion of owning a pistol?  Would it do it for me if it were on my shoe?  Grinding into the sidewalk, getting chipped and nicked--

And worse yet, looking...SILLY?

God forbid.

PRECISE SWISHING AT THE DENTIST'S

This woman is holding a tiny cup of mouthwash, dentist office strength, I assume.

Last week I was someone just like this, only I wasn't smiling.  I went to the dentist office right on time, for once, and had my teeth cleaned.

At the end of the cleaning

the cleaning person handed my a tiny cup.  Just like in the picture.  She said "Divide it in three parts, and swish each time for sixty seconds."

Complicated, I thought.  A flair of irritation.  Wasn't it enough that I had shown up to allow her to do her job, and now she was telling me to do something on my own?  What happened to the swish and spit days.

She handed me the suction thing.  "Use as needed," she said.  "DO NOT swallow any of it."

So now she had added a danger note to the precision part.

A familiar flash of resentment.  I wanted to toss off the cup in one fell swoop, swish for three seconds, and swallow.  So there.

But no, I said to self.  You are grown up now, remember?  You like to do the right thing--

I eyed the tiny amount in the cup.  Was it even possible to divide this minute amount into three parts?  What would happen if I messed up?  If I could only create two, not three, portions out of the pink stuff--

I liked the pink color.  And too, I am fascinated by the etiquette that grows up around all our daily activities, like playing tennis, which I don't, but you get the picture.

I took a sip.  I swished and swished and swished as I tried to count to sixty.  Swished and swished, I tell you.  Felt anxious about swallowing even a speck.  Swished till I dropped.  Thirty seconds.  I suctioned the stuff out.

Second teeny little slurp...swish swish...swish oops did I swallow some?

Third tear drop of mouthwash...swish...spit...no, slurp..."All done," I said, beads of sweat dripping into my clean mouth.

"Already?" she said.  Disbelief in her voice.  "Sixty counts?"

I indicated the empty cup.  She raised an eyebrow--

Her blue eyes stared hard at me over her mask.

"Sixty seconds...yes...um...almost sure...probably...maybe...." I whispered.  Very politely. 

 

DAMIEN HIRST JUST LOVES THOSE DEAD ANIMALS

It's happened to me again.  I don't know how I let these things get by me--

Damien Hirst just sold every last thing he has ever even thought about making, and I wasn't there.

Last year I missed out snapping up that ancient skull (yes, a real, human skull, otherwise how could Damien have called it art?), covered with all those very real diamonds.  That skull would have shone next to the Christmas tree.  I placated my sadness by buying rhinestones (from flea markets for that touch of artiness, right Damien?  Keep it honest, right?).  I bought tubs of glue, and voila, my very own Damien Hirst.

But now, I've gone and missed out again.  Where could I have been?  Yoga class?  Eating cereal in the dining room?  Getting a speeding ticket?

I am particularly upset that I didn't get a chance to snap up that Golden Calf of his.  I mean--what's not to love?  A dead animal floating in formaldehyde.  With those 18 carat gold horns and hooves.  Oh, isn't that just so Damien?  Quel genius, right?

I am somewhat mollified that because the thing went for $18.6 million, I probably would have lost out anyway.  In these dire times, right?, I just wouldn't have felt one hundred percent spending that kind of change on a dead animal, even though I just love 18 carat gold anything.

I'm not sure where I would have put it either.  In the dining room, to spark dinner party conversation?  Out in the front yard to irritate my neighbors just for the heck of it?  Next to my bed to insure sweet dreams?  But does formaldehyde smell?  That may have been an issue.  I really prefer sweet peas next to my bed.

So anyway, Darling Damien's sale of EVERYTHING netted over 200 million dollars.  It couldn't have happened to a nicer, sweeter, more giving, altruistic man, right?

Now maybe he can go away and learn how to paint a flower or two, since he's a genius artist, right?

It just boggles my mind at what could happen to a beautiful flower in the hands of Darling Damien.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE and THE ELECTION

I loved taking umbrage at his wordy brilliance. 

I loved rolling my eyes at the footnotes.

I loved never finishing a thing of his because I got filled up so completely, so quickly. 

Reading him was like eating cake batter.  Sinfully too much of a good thing.

He was brilliant.  A real live genius.   And he totally got on my nerves.  For all the wrong reasons...like envy.

Right now the election of the centuries is going on, right?  You know which one I mean.  And I am unable to have reasonable discussion about it with anyone who disagrees with me.  This causes me to behave like a three year old.  I am not a three year old.  Therefore I have decreed to self to ignore absolutely everything written, spoken, screamed, blown out of all proportion, and even reported in all earnestness and truthfulness, about the election.

This is not going to be easy.  I have four national newspapers showing up at my home a day, for instance. 

However, I just read an obituary for David Foster Wallace in which he was quoted from a 2005 commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College.  In this speech to twenty-two year olds, he puts perfectly what I am finally trying to learn how to do.

He said "Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.  It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.  Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.  Think of the old cliche about, quote, the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master."

I'll stand behind my man Barak Obama, without making a public spectacle of myself every time I run across someone who plans to vote for the other guy, or I read something I disagree with or catch out of the corner of my eye that enrages me.  I choose not to argue.

WHAT A CONCEPT! 

Thank you, David Foster Wallace.  I am so sorry you had to go.

MY BLOG's FIRST BIRTHDAY

This is HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my blog.

Actually it was a month or so ago--but I have problems with punctuality.

I've also been on vacation.  Part of it actually out of town. 

The other part  ensconced in a lovely state of peaceful doing nothingness.

HOWEVER, I'M BACK.  Just as school has started.  Just as September has begun, which leads to Fall, which leads to...many many things (most of them expensive and involving relatives), I am back writing this blog.

I plan to keep right on taking umbrage, expressing amazement, experiencing confusion, and laughing outright, at what I read.  I continue to eat magazines and newspapers alive.  Billboards continue to take my eyes off the road.  Advertisements continue to lure me.  Graffiti goes on irritating me no matter how arty, even though I know that gives away just how edgy I'm not.  I do still collect instruction manuals if the instructions are written in at least eleven languages, and buy fountain pens which lie dormant on my blotter.  And, if there is nothing else around, I will read the how-to-launder tags on my new clothes with intensely focused fervor.

However, I plan now to incorporate more about my daily life in the blog.

DAILY LIFE is to me the soul of life.  I would flounder without Internet crises, grocery stores, movies, idiots on the road in front of me, leaving late, opening birthday presents, firing the gardener (that was years ago, in another state), and wallowing in clean sheets.

I am also leaving for six weeks in Paris, in a few weeks.  I have a blog OCTOBER IN PARIS, which has lay dormant since I came home last year.  I will fire it up soon.

So, well...hello, and that's it.

CHICO'S LOVES MIKIE PHELP'S MOM

It seems that the very accomplished mother of Olympian Michael Phelps wears Chico's clothes.  She loves them so much, they were her clothes of choice when she went to the Olympics to cheer her son.

  Her clothes were noticed by Chico's themselves, and much crowing ensued.  In fact, they were so thrilled with the unexpected windfall of advertising, they have visited upon her a lovely endorsement deal. 

What they love best about this is, as opposed to those boring old celebrities, Mrs Phelps is a real woman (in addition to being the mother of Michael Phelps, she is also a middle school principal), and they figure the women of America want to know what real women are wearing so they can buy same.  Which is true.

But what truly impressed me was the fact Debbie Phelp's HAD a brand of clothes she wore the most.

So I had a look-see around my wardrobe, just so I'll be ready with my fave designer the next time one of my children decides to become world famous, and I have to be there. 

My closets were appalling.   

Not only was there no rhyme or reason, the closets were barely color co-ordinated, unmatched hangers proliferated, and jeans, too small and too expensive, hung there hooting at me.  Obviously, behind my back, a schizophrenic or triple Gemini picks out my clothes, and then deliberately visits mayhem upon my closets.

This must be what happens when one raises an Olympic champion.  Through sheer practicality one's closet takes on epic levels of clarity, order, and attention to detail.  So that a favorite designer will be able to emerge out of the crowd.

In closing, I must grudgingly admit that after all those years of getting Junior to the pool at 5:00 am, Mrs. Phelp's deserves her very own special rewards.