Is Your Face Supposed to Be Doing That?

I am molting.

A month and a half ago, suddenly horrified by the reality of being 33 years old with baby wrinkles, dry spots, and occasional breakouts, I ran screaming to an Upper East Side dermatologist and dropped an unholy sum on exactly three products. She also wrote me a prescription for Retin-A.

So apparently the way Retin-A works is to induce your skin to shed itself. This is every bit as sexy as it sounds. My skin has been flaking and peeling like a bad paint job. I was kind of secretly hoping that no one else had noticed, until the other day when Allen touched my scaly cheek worriedly and said, "Baby... is your face supposed to be doing that?"

I think those are words nobody ever wants to hear their partner say. Lucky me.

Greetings from the Naughty Bear Cafe

This weekend was my mini-bachelorette party. This is not to say that there will be a MAJOR bachelorette party at some point in the future--just that I didn't want a big fuss involving airplanes, Four Loko, greased-up strippers pretending to find vaginas appealing, or disorderly conduct arrests. It was just me, my sister-in-law, my cousin, and a couple of badly-behaved girlfriends... it was perfect. The girls surprised me with a sweet Apple book of photos culled from all their various hard drives, which made me both laugh and sniffle. And the cover of this book, splashed across it at full bleed, was the photo above.

My cousins Lauren and Leigh and I had just finished up a nice greasy brunch at a Shoney's in Harrisonburg, VA a few years ago, when on our way to the exit we spotted this painted wooden bear next to the cashier's station. He had a giant head and an ingratiating grin but what concerned all of us, immediately, was the gaping hole in the middle of his pelvic region. He had a little compartment for lollipops tucked away in there, so kids could just reach in and grab one. Cute, right? Except for the location of the hole. The bottom of which is a mere inch above the androgynously smooth, shapeless "T" of his crotch.

The more we studied his lollipop hole, the more his wide-eyed grin took on a whole new meaning. Reaching in there and feeling around while he beamed back at us was just... wrong. So what did we do? Took a picture of me with my hand in the hole and a similarly excited look on my face, of course. And that is the cover of my photo book, for all posterity. Me molesting a lollipop bear. And that wasn't even the last time I did something inappropriate to an animal statue in public.

Today on Hoarders: Wedding Edition...

One of the most endearing little things about Brooklyn is its informal sidewalk economy. Immediately after we moved here from Manhattan, I started noticing people just... leaving things outside their rowhouses and apartment buildings. Usually the items are left resting gently against the fence that separates the property from the sidewalk; occasionally wedged in between the bars of the fence, raised off the ground to entice passers-by to claim them. People leave all kinds of things that they think others are going to want: books, clothes, appliances of questionable functionality ("maybe somebody else can get it to work!"); I've even seen, more than once, pairs of worn-out, misshapen shoes optimistically waiting next to somebody's front gate. Toys, as my dear friend loves to document, are a very common offering--which makes sense. Kids tend to accrete massive amounts of them, so they're a natural candidate for semiannual purging. The whole thing is oddly sweet... this shared unwillingness to throw an unwanted but perfectly usable object into the garbage. If you don't have a big enough load to take to the thrift store, well, then, just put it out on the street. Sending the item to sidewalk limbo gets it out of the house while simultaneously absolving the donor of guilt, because hey, somebody else can use it now!

Aside from toys, housewares are one of the most popular sidewalk items. My fiance Allen and I were walking home from brunch today when we passed a group of small vases clustered in a shoe box, with the encouraging note "free vases--please take!" A lady was squatting next to them, investigating. I glanced at them and kept moving, but a few steps later it occurred to me that they were useful: plain, clear, glass, of a good size for, say, a few flower stems. On a table. At our wedding reception.

I swooped, gathering up the whole box and fleeing briskly walking away before the first lady could change her mind about not wanting anything. The vases clinked together happily in time to my steps. Allen studied me nervously. "What are you going to do with those?"

Clink. Clink. "They're for the wedding."

"OK. For what at the wedding?"

Clink. "The tables."

"But... there's only five of them. That's not enough for all the tables."

"Not for the dining tables," I said, my voice taking on the faint edge of insanity that creeps into it whenever I have to talk about any of the decor details with Allen. "But there will be a welcome table, and a table for the photobooth props, and the bar, and the buffet tables..."

He gave me the side-eye, unconvinced. "But..."

"STOP TRYING TO CONSTRAIN MY CREATIVITY WITH LOGIC," I yelled. And he gave in, until we were back at the house and I had loaded my new treasures into the dishwasher for a good rinse.

"So, what's going to happen with these things?" he said, gesturing at the small stack of oddly-sized dishes and dull old knives that have been gathering dust at the edge of our counter for a couple of months now. "Why don't you put these in the empty box and put them out on our sidewalk?"

"That would be very logical," I said.

"But that's not going to happen?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"I was saving them for our Woodstock house..."

"The Woodstock house we are hoping to buy within three to five years?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "We're going to need to furnish it, and what's the point of throwing something out and then just having to buy it again?"

He shook his head, but the plates were granted a stay of execution for now. The knives, we agreed, are terrible; and we wouldn't want to use shitty knives at the hypothetical Woodstock house any more than we do here. So they are going out on the sidewalk, in the same red shoe box the vases came in.

I'm sure someone will want them.

Austin love.

There are only a few places on earth that have stolen my heart from the minute I sucked their air into my lungs. Austin, Texas is at the top of that list.

Now, admittedly, this could also be in large part because when I arrived for the first time, my friend Karly was waiting for me in the airport with a chilled thermos full of vodka cocktail. However. The rest of the city made good. So creative, so colorful, so spirited--how could I not set my book there?

South Congress

Mighty Cone 

Uncommon Objects

and, well.

Not found in nature.

Makeup trial for the wedding. These were the only false lashes she had. I was the unholy love child of RuPaul and Bambi.

That's what SHE said.

Every summer, my best girls and I road trip up to our friend Jess's house on the St. Lawrence river, where we spend four days playing cards, gorging ourselves on cookies and peering suspiciously at the Canadians across the river. When we all get together, our collective maturity level devolves to that of a pack of thirteen-year-old boys who giggle uncontrollably anytime somebody says the word "hard." One particular manifestation of this is an obsession with "that's what she said" jokes, which we take turns passing around-- but after a while we get a little over-zealous with it, and some of the jokes get a little strained (not that that stops us from trying).

After I got home, I went through a couple tough days of withdrawal--whenever I try one on my fiance, instead of laughing, he tends to just get a look on his face like, "why the hell am I marrying a teenage boy?" And then there I was, at work on Wednesday, minding my own business, when my coworker went to lift a heavy binder off the shelf over her head. "Man, that's big," she muttered to herself.

I LEAPT ON THAT LIKE A GOD DAMN JUNGLE CAT.

"That's what SHE said!" I shouted triumphantly, leaping up from my seat with a combination fist pump/finger-stab.

I am. So very cool.