Wednesday, July 27, 2011

It's 99 degrees and Paul Simon is in my ear

Good Morning Darlings,

I'm so sorry for the lack of, well anything lately. My mind has been completely elsewhere and my work hours have blossomed to an average of twelve. Usually the last thing on my mind after said work hours is staring at a computer. But there are a few things I want to talk about today.
Please buy me this beauty, and send it to me at camp.
Did I mention that I collect vintage cookery and  etiquette books? I have even worked that fact into my resume, which could possibly be the reason nobody wants to hire me. Collections in general scream "CRAZY HOARDER"

A. Taschen is publishing a new book featuring Vintage menus. It is all about food and design, which are obviously my two favourite things in the entire world. This book has EIGHT HUNDRED old menus. I would give up all of my coffee table books for this one (well, okay maybe not ALL of them). One day, I was going through some of my fabulous grandmother's stuff and I stumbled upon menus from the cruises that her and my grandfather took in the late 1960s. There is a menu for every day, and people had to get dressed up for dinner. I'm talking JACKETS, men. There was none of this wearing denim for every occasion business. I mean seriously, we went to the orchestra on a Saturday night and the guy next to me was wearing stone washed denim and a matching jacket. Not only is this not 1996, but it's also plain inappropriate. The musicians are wearing bow ties and gowns, the least you can do is put a (non denim) jacket on. I don't care if your jeans cost $367 dollars and were picked out especially for you by your personal shopper at Neiman's or if they are from the clearance rack at WalMart. They have no place at the orchestra, the theatre, the ballet, nor at any restaurant with linens that are not red and white checkered.

In fact, I believe that every man should own a tuxedo once thirty rolls around. It wills an occasion for a tuxedo to come into your life. Now, I am not suggesting that any of the above venues are appropriate places to wear a tuxedo. I mean, if you are going to the Met Ball, sure...or some type of gala for the ballet in a large metropolitan city...

What I am saying is that there is a time and a place for various types of apparel and sometimes people are incredibly mistaken. I am all for personal style, but this has nothing to do with style, it has to do with manners and etiquette. You know how you wouldn't probably go to your buddy's house on Sunday to watch the Eagles game in a suit? Well, you probably shouldn't go anywhere with cocktail napkins in the same thing you would wear to watch the Eagles game at your buddy's house.

Ladies, don't think you are getting off the hook - this applies to you too. A dress from the Deb shop with Lucite heels does not an appropriate outfit make. In fact if your date is wearing a tuxedo, nothing on your body should be made of synthetic fabrics. You should be dressed like you mean it from top to bottom and inside out. If someone is coming up to your dinner table with a silver dome and presenting you your food, it is inappropriate to have granny panties on underneath, even if your dress cost more than your diamonds.
Appropriate underattire. 


A lady should always know her audience ("all life is a stage" once proclaimed some witty English gentleman) and a lady always has an audience. The art of dressing appropriately is very tough for a woman. While men have to accessorize, women have many more options which makes this task infinitely more challenging. Also, a man's dress code changes very little from the time he is a little man to when he becomes a full fledged adult. Boys clothes are essentially smaller men's clothing while this is not the case with girls, ladies, and women.

Every little detail counts with a woman. Her peers are her worst critics and she, theirs. Women are the worst to each other. I judge a woman if she is wearing sheer tights with open toed shoes.

This photo draws so much emotion. I am sick to my stomach, upset, angry and empathetic.  I can forgive after some serious therapy, but I can never ever forget this sin. 
Excuse me while I go empty my stomach via my mouth. There is no excuse for this. TAKE SOME PRIDE LADY! 


 I judge women based on the way they dress all of the time. It's not something that I can really help. It's a natural occurrence and while it is not something that I wish upon anyone else, I am proud of the way I think about it. If the world would let me, I would re-dress them, especially the women in sheer hose with open toed shoes. Sometimes I feel bad for judging, because I know that they are just ignorant and don't have the education that I do. If I could make-a-wish, I would wish for all the women in the world to be gifted an Emily Post book at birth. This includes how to dress, how to eat, how to entertain, and how to be a lady. It's a dying art. Who writes letters anymore? Learn how to make and eat a jello mold without getting any on your beautiful floral apron and then come talk to me.

Listen, I am not asking you to produce a dinner party every night, nor am I asking you to wear ballgowns to the supermarket. I work at a camp for crying out loud. I am in cotton just about all day every day. But I am constantly moving around and constantly changing. When I play tennis, I wear tennis apparel, at the gym, I wear workout gear. In the office, an appropriate summer look (always dependent on the weather) and at night, something casual and cool. All I am saying is be aware of your surroundings and understand that people do (fortunately or unfortunately) make first judgments based on aesthetics.They say to not judge a book by it's cover, but that cover at the top of this blog sure looks swell.

xoxo
lcf

Friday, July 15, 2011

City Limits

Good Afternoon Darlings,

I've been in Maine for just about 45 days. And while I love being here more than I love being anywhere else, being a city girl, I really miss certain things about the city.

I miss a good meal. Being out here in the sticks, it is dining hall food or bust most nights. And while I'm not going to hate on the food that we are served, I am going to say that it has no nutritional OR taste value, which pretty much makes it guilt inducing without a choice. Now, it's not that I don't choose to eat guilt inducing food on the regular at home. We've discussed this. I like food. I love food. But let's be honest, a mushroom crusted strip steak with a gimlet (or 2) is not quite the same as macaroni and cheese with ritz crackers on top. I work with kids, and I'm sure that the kids love it and that their metabolism takes away the "guilt inducing" part of it. But it's not something I am completely in awe of. In fact when it comes to junk food, I would rather eat the real thing - KRAFT blue box mac and cheese. Pizza from the dodgy place around the corner, not with "mutigrain crust," and pasta - if I'm going to eat pasta, I want for nothing more than a steaming plate of capellini with really good olive oil, really good shaved parmesan, and really good anchovies.

I miss being able to walk 9 minutes to my local sushi place and paying $11 for good sushi. The same goes for Pho, Vietnamese, and hipsterchicbreakfast. I miss my Starbucks (but my bank account doesn't) and I miss happy hour (but remind me to tell you about my replacement for over the summer some time).

I can smell the beef tendon wafting, ever so slightly  mixing with the fresh scent of cilantro and jalapeno.
Oh how I salivate at the thought. 

You are probably wondering what they feed us up here. Well, here's the thing: it's free, so there is no use complaining about it, but I'm going to anyway, because I am a food snob and I like to complain about things. We have a salad bar, which is very large in size, but very small in quality. We have things like 3 different types of hot peppers to fill our salads with. Sometimes there is chocolate pudding on the salad bar, sometimes there are radishes and beets. But there is hardly ever any other protein than tuna, and while I love tuna - the prospect of getting Mercury poisoning while without health coverage seems quite daunting to this little lady. And I also don't want a doctor to have to write me a get of jail free card, like they had to do for J Pivs. It seems a little lame - like "Oh sorry I can't come to work today because I ate too much tuna." Isn't that sort of the same study in gluttony as "Oh sorry I can't come to work today because I drank too much red wine?" I mean no boss that I know would really be happy to excuse you from work because of alcohol consumption - so why would they excuse you for too much tuna? It seems silly -  but it may happen in the near future as my tuna consumption has hit an all time high. 

Sometimes on the salad bar, we are able to enjoy baby corn, which as we all know - serve more of  a comical value than any sort of nutritional one. Ohh I'm eating my baby corn for all of it's (fiber, sodium, carbs, and cals!). Not the case. I'm eating my baby corn so that I can pretend I am Tom Hanks in Big. If you have no idea what  I am talking about, please see below (but really you should be ashamed of yourself)


IMO Tom Hanks could have ended his screen career here and died a legend. This movie doesn't ever fail to entertain, and the sweet pad he buys in the city would still thrill any teenage boy today. Talk about a movie to last the ages. 


What other delicacies does the salad bar hold? Well usually beet root, which I can't complain about because I love beets. Also, sometimes canned pineapple rings and pears. OH REALLY? You want me to eat canned fruit? Why don't you just put a bowl of sugar out in front of me and I'll eat spoonfuls of that. IT"S THE SAME THING. Who decided that it was a good idea to eat canned fruit? What's the point of eating a pear (the food of the GODS) out of a can - you don't get the satisfaction of the first crunch, or the first dribble of pear juice down your chin and on to your too expensive for pear juice blouse (usually worth the price of dry cleaning). And canned pineapple? Only if you are going to make a centerpiece for a 60s themed party: 

Mad Men Party 2008: Pineapple and Maraschino Cherry Centerpiece (Thanks Aynsley!)
Canadian Club for the boys, Champagne Cocktails for the girls
Canned pineapple to do anything but make fun craft projects exploring our parents generation is an abomination to all good in this world. Pineapple is supposed to be sweet and tangy. Canned pineapple is just sweet. So sweet that it usually makes me gag when I eat it. There is no crunch. There is no tang. There is no closing your eyes and feeling like you are in paradise. There is, however, closing your eyes and fearing that your next course of toasted Spam may be burning in the room next door.

We eat more ground beef here than I ever have in my entire life. Meatballs for lunch? Meatloaf for dinner! It's like a call and respond. I could probably write a song about all that you can do with ground beef. Our official toilet plunger has been complaining all summer about the monstrosities that are the toilets here. No wonder. 

Anyway, I'll stop complaining so that I can go fill my brand new tumbler with some coffee. 


xoxo

lcf





Saturday, July 2, 2011

Sometimes...

Good Afternoon Darlings,

It seems that although I am living in the middle of nowhere right now, where a night on the town includes pizza, Dunkin coffee, and some ice cream, my fashion emotions are still entirely capable.

How do I know this?

Well after my lunch meeting today, I wandered back up to my office (stopping for a few wanderlust chats and perhaps a carton of milk and a cookie), re-opened thesaurus.com and a banner ad popped up. Why was I on thesaurus.com? Well it just so happens that I do not make my living writing this blog (SHOCKED, I'm sure), so I needed to pump up my resume with words that are not "organization" and "skills." I can sell an ice cube to an Eskimo (I'll tell you about it another time), but fall flat on my face when I try to sell myself. In fact, my default cover letter reads like I am someone who wears pleated front Dockers and white on white sketchers all the time (obviously you should have learned how to read between the lines enough by now to know that bad highlights are also included in that statement).

Are you visualizing? Are you?

WELL SNAP OUT OF IT. I am not that person! You want to know why? Because I know that I am fabulous even in sweatpants and a mucousy cough. I will put cheetah print on my nails when I am not allowed to wear it anywhere else. I like razzle and I love dazzle and don't even get me started on the vajazzle. Haha, just kidding about the last one. I have yet to try it, which is a possible sin to all of humanity. I need to try these things before I can suggest them to the masses (all 7 of you). But for some reason, I can neither find the razzle, dazzle, or vajazzle about myself to put on a paper to send to a prospective employer.

But there's this job that I really really really want. And I really really really want them to see the Ra, Da, and Vajazzle LCF on paper. So anyway, that's why I was on thesaurus.com. Because I am not only someone who knows how to write, but I am also someone who knows how to access the internet, and that is a plus to some people these days (or so I hear).

Back to the point, there was a banner ad on thesaurus.com. And apparently I go on Saks.com far too often because Saks banner ads follow me everywhere. And I have learned to not to follow most of them. But for some reason, I (against my better judgement) followed this one.

And this is what I found:

I almost fainted for it. 
This bag is LCF. If LCF came back as a bag, it would be this gem. It's so beautiful. It's so classic. It's so edgy. It is like if my mother and I were to build a bag together, it would be this one. It has enough of her hippie roots, but also enough of my classic aesthetics to make it a timeless piece. 

The way the photo of this bag made me feel restored my faith in myself. I can live in Maine, live in cotton, drive a Subaru, and enjoy sitting around a bonfire but still get butterflies in my stomach for a Gucci bag that costs three times my mothers mortgage. 

xoxo
lcf