After composing the following images, I need a Tiparillo and a cold compress. I can has… all?

These shorts, these shorts, these shorts, these shorts, oh god, these shorts, these shorts, I need these shorts.

This cardigan would eliminate the need for robes, blankets, kind words, hugs, et al.

The two beauties flanking the gorgeous maxi skirt are sweater dresses. Sweater dresses, people.

Birthday is in something horrific like 5 days. To soften the blow, I’ll take all of the above, and a hard slap in the face.

Check out Wildfox Couture for more amazingness.

-Carey

…wrapped in plastic. An important distinction.

And I found one. Two blocks away.

Just for perspective:

I’m kind of a dirtbag when it comes to food. Lazy and indiscriminating. Like a garbage disposal. With an odd penchant for plastic-wrapped deli sandwiches from convenience stores. So when it was 2PM, 65 degrees and sunny, and I’d worked straight through the first two meals of the day, I hauled a huge, corduroy bell bottom up over my right knee and pedaled off in search of the perfect pre-made sandwich.

I hit a couple of regular stops, but struck out. Fighting my normal urge to just buy something mediocre and eat it while doing something else to avoid acute disappointment, I pressed on.

[That girl is wearing my sweater. Clap, clap!]

Shields Market, way to deliver. [Again! Perfect picnic furnished by Shields flashback in this post from our first month in Richmond.] Their entire prepared foods selection totally blew the local options out of the water. For the same price as a tuna salad-stuffed tomato Reynolds-wrapped to a styrofoam plate*, I got this: flaky baguette, prosciutto, sharp provolone, greens and olive oil—$5.99. Classy cellophane, too: I almost saved it like my mom saves Christmas ribbons. There’s even a table and chair out front at which to chomp it while watching a parade of pooches.

Fan livin’. It doesn’t suck.

-Carey

*No hate. I love them and frequent that joint with gusto. Phenom beer selection.

Went off without a hitch—great turnout, the store was hopping, and it was fun to get to select an awesome variety of Oregon wines to show off the region’s best. I laid out some photos from my Oregon trip [recap post here] and poured a bunch of great wines. Planning on hosting one at the Patterson store in the near future… so make sure, if you’re in RVA, you like the store on FB to get updates on tasting schedules. Always a good time!

-Rob.

You gotta check out this RVA band we saw at Balliceaux the other night. So upbeat and bad-daz. We shook it with the hipsters and drank PBRs until the wee hours, then ducked into the sleet to hit up 3rd Street Diner for some late night breakfast. And chicken fingers. Perfection.

I wore these funky pants from Free Peeps:

Buy the album here for $8. So brilliant. They’ll be at The Camel on Feb 3rd, and so will I!

-Carey

And watch this vid of one of my favorite tracks. Tambourine goodness!

I never really assume that I’m being ridiculous—especially when keeping to myself in the corner playing tambourine, or, say, singing opera to Eli only using the word “meow” while counting his whiskers—until Rob strolls in, assesses the situation, and starts laughing. Today was no exception.

See, if I feel like setting up a beach chair in the corner of the dining room and grooving out, it’s an impulse I don’t over-think.

[Please note penny hot-glued to record player arm. I had a dream in which I did that to stop the skipping, so did it in real life, and it worked!]

[Daydreamer LA t-shirts (Urban) are my primary means of dressing these days. Sumptuous, soft, and drape-tastic. I also like how this one sort of smells like chemicals and burned rubber.]

And that’s how cold, dank Sundays are done.

-Carey

Just in this big old Keef Richard mood lately. It’s unstoppable. Feel like flopping my bell bottoms all around town with my arm around some hot blonde and a thrice-relit cig dangling from a sticky lip.

Today, I was hot on his three-piece suit look, below. So I reinterpreted it, with the boots I got especially because they made me think of him.

Tossin’ a toe to “Sweet Virginia”—

I’ve got about 47 other Keef photos on my desktop, so brace yourselves.

Really taking to our new compatible work hours, which allow for my annoying Rob at work. And daytime wine. Remember this scene? [:51] That actually happened today. I’m kidding, it didn’t. I go to bed early, and wake up early. No, wait; I don’t.

Don’t the slackers usually hang on that grassy knoll over there?

Happy weekend, kiddies.

-Carey

[Anthro skirt + A Wang tee + Urban sequin vest + Kors boots + Banana jacket.]

Make that two flutes.

The pan flute, seen below, is impossibly hard and were it not for the cool pom pom accoutrements, I would have thrown it out the window yesterday.

I flout while driving.

That’s all.

-Carey

What makes you happy?

That no bullshit, unapologetic, 100% successful/60% of the time, in the moment, bar-none happy maker—that thing that just works for you. That you don’t need to explain.

Get specific with me. I’m not talking Fridays; I’m talking: putting the key in the ignition on Friday after work, putting your hair in a bun, and driving right to the corner market for a 6-pack of Hoegaarden. [Hey, I write what I know.] Taking off an itchy wool sweater. Burying thine face in a pile of warm, sleeping cat fur when you’re already running 10 minutes late! A dirty, dirty martini for dinner and nothing else. Shouting out loud in the middle of the night—to the dismay of your spouse—how awesome that cold patch of sheets are you just found. A Bernie’s sub at 3PM after you’ve already had lunch.

So what is it?

One of mine? Showing up unannounced at Rob’s work and coming in through the back door—prrt.

Usually, I’m dressed to the nines. [Dressing up for Rob has always been a fun part of being married to me. And thanks, Leyendecker. B/c this poncho always makes Rob tell me I'm "so cool", even if I just made him watch 4 Maru videos, while in the middle of something important, like shaving.]

Sometimes I arrive bearing gifts of food, or midget cans of Coke. Almost always, it’s midway through tucking my sunglasses into the collar of my shirt—as if I had no idea he’d be there—cocking my head, and inquiring, “So… what’re yeh pouring?”

My happy maker: an open afternoon, and all the things that entails. That’s what I’d draw from the old bean.

While I’d expect your magazine of answers to be vast and varied, those first few things that bubble up taste best. It’s the chewy, slippery thing we writers thrive on: compact descriptions of the indescribable. First-liners.

It was more the way he drank the water—like he wanted to, and not that he was supposed to—that bothered her. She loved Gatorade, though, and kept it by the bed. She mostly only drank it when a car alarm woke her up in the middle of the night, but tucked away a satisfaction in its glossy orange contents and ‘hydration while she slept’.

That’s mine. So give me your best first paragraph of a novel about you. What you like. And why it makes you utterly fascinating. Release the hounds!

-Carey

This year, our New Year’s Eve playground was the wine store. The open sign was unplugged and the wine we’ve been all itchy to open over the last year was liberated. For me, it was a special bottle of Billecart-Salmon Brut, somewhere around its tenth birthday, given to me for my thirtieth birthday, and a Grand Cru Mongeard Mugneret Echezeaux that was pretty damned sexy.

[The bros of Barrel Thief: Booth (black tux), Sam (white tux), Sean, and me.]

[Unfortunately, my Billecart bottle was not happy to be opened by a sabre and appears as though I popped it with a golf club.]

[Me and my Burgundy. One happy dude.]

[No tv's this year, just a homemade ball drop. Hopefully Dick Clark wasn't made to suffer through another countdown.]

Happy new year!

-Rob.

Finished work for the morning and needed something to do in the afternoon that wasn’t related to either exercise or eating. Naturally, a trip to see Rob at work for a glass of wine, then a lubricated stop at the antique mall were in order.

And I was in and out in under 10 minutes. Much longer and I start to turn into that freaky woman from Labyrinth, clutching Lancelot the bear to my chest.

Now, watch as I slowly turn this Fan pad into Keith Richards’ apartment-sized junk drawer.

Starting with more unnecessary vintage bar glasses. These are getting me pumped for rum & tonic season! Which is still months away.

This is important:

At least I think it is. We’ll see.

This was the find of the day! It has a mate [somewhat water-spotted, but still] if anyone is interested. I won’t charge a finder’s fee.

Cork overflow:

Another green book to add to the stack of green books. This one might prove useful to me, though: Learning to Write.

And a hippo. Eli gave his rear end a good sniff, and I got deja vu. [Remember this?]

Hippo should also fit in nicely with the white rabbits, seen here.

Are you on Instagram yet? Because you could keep up with my useless afternoons like this there. I’m Wodehizzle, naturally; hit me.

-Carey

There’s a reason why I always ask people: “What’d your order look like?” when I hear they’ve been out to eat. What people eat is such a window. I’m a voyeur in restaurants; what people choose to put in their mouths is fascinating. There’s nothing I wouldn’t eat, after all.

Except when I’m off-kilter. On most days, I equate my palate—and tummy—with my soul’s immediate condition. I don’t look back fondly on that stretch of months during which my anxiety was so severe, I subsisted solely on coffee, red wine, and Tyson’s Southern Style Chicken Nuggets. [Mommy loves you, nuggy babies. 1.5 on high + honey = true love. 4eva.]

Some days, your soul has to override the system. It’s got to come out through your eyes and hands and hammer out a demand on the end of the dining room table. A demand you weren’t keen to, as far as gastric awareness goes. And you don’t go serving it dog food.

[Nothing---I repeat: NOTHING---beats the smell of onions cooking in butter.]

Like the onion I picked up and threw in the shopping cart without being sure why. Then the sour cream, followed by the gradual mental checking-off of pantry contents: broth, paprika, oil, my favorite sea salt. I may not be sly as a fox, but my stomach certainly is.

And when the rhythm of cooking without a recipe or a timer took over, the day, too, melted away. And the room got warm. I got loose. Somewhere inside, my various inhospitable parts shook hands and agreed on something. My heart handed my head a drink with a slow, knowing nod.

And Rob, fresh off a rough couple of days, moseyed in, rubbing his hands together, unsure where to stand in the narrow space. So I handed him the wooden spoon and a half cup of sour cream, and he made the best paprikash I’ve ever had.

That’s when you get the power of food. I certainly do.

-Carey

She’s just a genius. Not much else to say there. Mara Hoffman blows it out of the water for another season of gnarly prints and sick colors. I’m digging the cycle back to the Central American vibe here.

Take me to the river… drop me in the water.

-C

Ha ha! Fanny! I’m sorry, my dad came up with that last time they were visiting. And since fanny is one of my favorite words, it stuck. I’m a Fanny. I live in the Fan. Get it?

Today I woke up with the Thursday doldrums. Lack of motivation and work, plus a flu-ish, cold-ish thing I’ve been warding off with wine the last 2 days, left me in the dumps and feeling crusty. I told my mom I was feeling “listless” and she responded with this:

Think of the things you wish you had time to do when you normally don’t.

God, moms are smart.

So I took myself to the museum.

[In honor of the Elvis at 21 exhibit, I wore the closest thing I had to blue suede shoes.]

[Had a little refueling out on the patio of the Best Cafe. 46 in the sun... not too bad for late December.]

Now let’s talk dead people; specifically, mummies:

[Epic 3-D glasses!]

It should be noted there was a mummy penis in the short film we watched. Patrick Stewart narrated: “You don’t need extensive forensic evidence to see… this is a male.” I laughed like a little schoolgirl.

[No cameras allowed in there, so you'll just have to go check it out. I moseyed around with tears in my eyes. N.B. I've been toting around this $10 print of a black and white photo of Elvis for over 10 years, purchased in a gift shop in Memphis. In it, he's touching tongues with a young woman. Not until today did I realize that photo was taken in Richmond, VA! Eternally cosmic.]

I’d like both of the following in my home, please:

Then this Fanny walked back home, stopping at Strawberry Street Market for a Trippel and some half and half (not to drink together). Ideal Fanny behavior! Smart neighborhood patronage, Fanny. Excellent Fanny! Active Fanny.

Man, I love getting to say Fanny this many times!

Fanny.

ok, ok, I’m done.

-Carey

I have excellent news! No, seriously. The scales hath fallen from my eyes. A mystery solved. And for someone who goes through life being pretty perceptive [brain as hive of bees], albeit often adept at missing the obvious [bees can be loud], this is a coup.

Let’s take a step back a second.

Our Christmas afternoon at the beach was an exercise in being present. The sand, the surf, the sun appearing to be filtered through a Kleenex, the keplunk-keplink of the Kadima ball, and the use of one’s senses for all the things they’re meant to be used for: not stress, not Internet multitasking, not practiced, self-conscious, guarded movements… just eyes, ears, muscles, and reflexes to play a game.

I don’t think I had shoes on more than 3 times since Wednesday. A little soul-stirring connection with the terrain of my birth [windblown dunes are resilient and graceful; always nice to witness] left me feeling thankful and grounded, and just in time.

[Bloody Mary + a head-clearing, seaside game of paddleball. Both briny and perfect.]

If you’ve been around me at all in the last month, you’ve heard me beat a dead horse of an issue: my quest to find my spirit animal. [Also known as power animal, totem animal, etc. I'm still fuzzy on the whole thing.] It’s become a bit of an obsession. I’ve attempted to ask others for [and take online quizzes to learn] something I finally realized was only going to come from myself. That, and, I read something that said to “set my ego aside.” After all, your spirit animal isn’t a reflection of you, per se, but a guide that comes to you at a time in your life. And when you meditate, with some patience, it will fly in and land on a branch at the tree you’re under, or come sauntering out of the bushes, so on and so forth. Then you ask it questions, and when it leaves, always remember to thank it.

I was fully prepared to have my animal turn out to be, like, a bullfrog or some hateful species of monkey. But I focused more on why I wanted to figure this bit of obscurity out. I thought about what I wanted to learn. And I waited on my mentor to come find me.

I kept my eyes open for a few days, and sure enough, the little bugger wouldn’t stop jumping into my consciousness: in a photo, on a sweater, during a gorgeous wildlife show I was captivated by for an hour, in a book, and finally, painted on the wall of the park down the street where I found myself on a post-flight walk today. Staring me right in the face.

["Hey, C, you should be more smart like me."]

Of course. It was so obvious then. The footage of the fox watching the wolves from afar. Gauging the scenario then with caution, assessing his next move. I was sitting out on the dock with my dad drinking coffee, and in conversation about work and trusting your skills and recognizing your strengths, I said, “But you know me, I’m so indecisive.” “No. You’re the most decisive person I know,” he replied.

Those with fox as a spirit guide are frequently smart and witty but must remember to keep their crafty and clever demeanor balanced or it could backfire. Fox can also show you the need to learn to be more discreet. Often the underlying basis of a situation may seem obvious, but instead of making a quick judgment, listen closely to the outer and inner senses. Then you may perhaps get a completely different picture of what is going on. When the outer situation and the inner senses don’t match, it is wise to handle like a Fox, to trust one’s intuition/instinct/inner voice, and to lay low.

Fox is a wise, potent, teacher for those who choose to live conscious and deliberate lives, and can teach us to control our auras so we are more able to live in harmony with the world and others.

Deliberate. Aware. Decisive. And nothing to do with how cute they look when they dive face-first into snow to catch mice.

I’d like to think I chose my animal, but I think she chose me.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday, peeps.

-Carey

First! Look at my awesome robot-inspired copper wire and glitter garland I made from tree dropping at Maymont. It’s about to be a year-round installation.

So, just padding around the apartment with a Hoegaarden, music playing, windows open on this 65-degree day in December, stringing together patterns in my dreams, and toying with the idea of visiting the Aquarian Bookshop in Carytown. I’ve been riding my bike by it lately, slowing down and peering in, but too shy to go inside. 

A couple of weeks ago, I took myself to Curbside for Monday night football and made friends with the gentlemen flanking me at my favorite stool at the bar. Harry, to my left, a fun and flabby party animal who I chided for ordering less hots wings than I did, and who commiserated with my Jaguars’ loss, and [name forgotten] to my right, who saw my chipped, picked black nailpolish and promptly informed me “I had a lot of living I wasn’t getting around to.”

Ouch.

No Name ended up being arbiter of one of the most fascinating 2-hour conversations I’ve had in awhile. He dubbed me a free spirit, asked me a lot of cursory but fun questions, told me about his kids, numerology, and described his [what I'll classify as kind of unfortunate] love of purchasing crystals. [Remember this? Haha.] It’s cool; I’m an amethyst fan myself.

But he directed me to the Bookshop. “You can get as deep as you want there. As deep as you want to go.”

They have readings, too.

Today we held a cat conference out on the street. Toby, Eli’s twin from across the street, was eating some grass with a black and white fellow in the sunshine, and after inquiring about the attributes of this year’s winter crop, they both followed us home, where Eli was on the porch hollering. The three had a couple of stare downs, Eli said something in a Schenectady accent that neither of those Southern boys could decipher, then Toby rolled around at my feet and we all went our separate ways.

Typical day in the Fan.

-C

You read this post. Some of you laughed, some of you understood; hell, some of you even related.

A friend came over to visit briefly before hopping a train back to D.C., and while relaxing on the porch, digesting Garnett’s Croque sandwiches and ginger ale, a small automobile cruised through our street’s stoptional, it’s back left hub cab wobbly in the Sunday sun.

We got onto the subject of wheels. Within moments, I was hysterical with tears in my eyes. It’s no secret to my loved ones that a good, wobbly hub cap can really send me over the edge. Hub caps resting on trees on the side of the road? That too. Wheels in general? You betcha.

That’s why I knew it’d be worth my while when Rob called me into the living room to witness this clip from the greatest car show of all time, Top Gear. British humor + much wheel footage?

Try not to cry while you watch this.

-C

One-wheeled wonderment:

Spike-wheeled insanity:

And extra bonus footage of a wheel flying across a field:
“Oh, no, he’s driven ’round it, hasn’t he.”

Do you watch Viral Video Film School? Geniusness. Especially this episode:

Oddly enough, I completely endorse that brand of chardonnay. Within the context of the hat.

-Carey

Visited the Bo at the ‘office’ today to bring him some lunch and ended up paying for a pour. (Or two.) Dig my new Free People kimono: perfect for trips to Kroger for multiple boxes of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch (my own holiday tradition), rainy day molding about, and fostering ambiguity about whether or not I’m still in PJs.

If you’re in RVA, stop by and see Rob at the Barrel Thief on Patterson. He spins a mad good Pandora station, I hear. Wilco, the Stones, Neutral Milk Hotel, The National, and Band of Horses.

-Carey

[Jazz handishness.]

Gonna need all of that. Starting with the t-shirt. [What about Brian? And Anita? She should be stitched somewhere on the back for being the band poltergeist.] And the coat. And the scarf. All perfect for when I’m cramped back in coach mixing a bloody with my index finger, elbows pinned to my sides. Holiday travel is here!

-Carey

I’m always wary of airing any dirty laundry here. I’ve been called out on it before and it felt like an ugly accusation; it’s my podium, after all.

It’s astonishing to me the number of things I regularly note that should require change on an annual basis, but with which I have yet to take action. Life stuff, habits, and errors so frequent, they should have a brass name plate in front of a bar stool in my brain space.

• Living paycheck to paycheck
• IPAs and Hefeweizens on school nights
• Self deprecating humor
• Getting by with the bare minimum in preparation
• Temper loss
• Washing face before bed so as to prevent unsightly black stains on all my pillow cases
• Waiting until the last can of cat food to buy more, and on a Sunday, when the store is closed.

[I love trains. Love them. So beautiful.]

I always seem to find comfort in the fact that everyone has these, most often when I’m reading The Wink and thinking, “She’s that whole and together, but still feels this way?” She’s a sort of real life hero of mine, so in a roundabout way I’m cool with the pillow case thing.

Less subsidiary faults include: driving when one should not, manipulation of others’ emotions, admissions of others’ truths (in vino veritas), quitting when it was the easy way out, and allowing others’ negative assumptions of me to become validated.

Perhaps, that last one? The worst of all. And after face planting on that issue, it’s not as viable anymore. Lesson learned. I hope.

If I had to trace back to where it started (belligerent inertia giving way), it’d be almost 5 and a half years ago. When, in some Days of Our Lives-ish twist of fate and error, my relatively carefree life sort of imploded. It was a culmination. I was the fulcrum, and everything tipped the wrong way. Even in my relative innocence, a lifetime of errors leading up to it sort of stripped me of any credibility in the situation. All of a sudden, I felt like a tabloid piece in my hometown, some sick self-fulfilling prophecy. With that one thing, I turned tail and ran—humiliated, but steeled; angry, but sad; directionless, but blindly determined. First to the French countryside, where the search of self kicked off, and then to upstate New York—a place where I knew no one and nothing, and could start over.

Right now, I’m dealing with resenting that day in 2006, how it toppled my self esteem, and the subsequent decisions. It’s like a living hologram, and it’s taken a lot of energy from me—when I could be focusing on giving myself more credit. Maybe it was less about the foible, more about my taking the bull by the horns. Even if that meant getting the hell out of dodge.

At some point, you have to differentiate between good and bad in your life. Am I still running from that terrible thing? Or should I thank it, and thank the universe for the fact it was only as bad as it was (no one died, my criminal record remains clean, and most seem to have forgotten that smudge), and that it allowed me this paradigm shift? To stop thinking of myself as subordinate to others’ opinions, but that who I am will only ever be as good as I believe I am?

What’s a weakness, or a character flaw? And what is just plain who you are, and the squiggly snail trail of your life as you’ve lived it? As I struggle to see the inherent value in/recognize the potential for wasted time in analyzing near misses and chances for greatness in my past, the thing I want to work the hardest at changing is being impossibly hard on myself.

Perhaps with the energy that will free up, I can get on to more important things, like taking multivitamins, being less judicious with giving affection, and calling my Granny Marge.

-Carey