Why must they torture me so?

Just before every holiday Dean and Deluca sends me a catalog filled with the most beautiful little confections. Sweets so pretty, you'd have to be a monster to destroy them by sinking your teeth into them. 

When I was a little girl there was a candy store and lunch counter in Ann Arbor called Drake's. The midwestern version of Laduree. (Please check out this flickr album on Drake's it made me SO nostalgic!) Every Saturday we would go to Border's books. The original Border's books was in Ann Arbor. It was a great old bookstore, with two stories and a big staircase in the back that lead to the kids books section. We would spend the morning there, and after, we'd go to Drake's and my mom would let us each pick out what kind of candy we wanted out of the jars. I can't recall if we scooped it ourselves, or if they scooped it for us. But I always chose the same thing, violet pastilles. 

They must have been these C. Howard violet mints, but they were sold bulk from the jar, right along with the lemon drops, and the licorice. I didn't choose them because I liked the way they tasted. As a matter of fact they sort of made me gag. Candy should never taste like flowers. Blech! I chose it because it was beautiful. It was the palest chalky lavender. En masse it looked like Marie Antoinette candy, although this was before I knew who Marie Antoinette was. 

One day my mom opened up the desk drawer in my room and found it filled with parchment bags of violet candies. I told her that I didn't like the taste of them, but I thought they were pretty. Maybe the first sign of me hoarding pretty little things I have no use for. After almost 6 years of marriage, Nipper has finally learned that when I have amassed some weird pile of candy hearts en español, or scraps of fabric, or tiny little cardboard inserts with goldfish printed on them, not to bother asking "what's this for?" The answer is, I don't know. But someday I'll have a use for it. 

Almost there

Remember being bored when you were a kid? I can remember time going by so slowly I thought I would go crazy from boredom. My mom would always say "only boring people get bored". I must have been the dullest child, because I was bored all the time. Now it seems like days go by like minutes. I can't get ahead of my list, there's always more. Maybe this is to do with being an adult, or being a parent, but I think it's also to do with being a perfectionist. I'm never satisfied until I've got something just so. I'm doing better at appreciating the things I've done once they are done, instead of moving right along to the next thing. Sometimes I have to mentally handcuff myself to the task at hand because I'm always contemplating the next thing. Working on being present in the moment is my biggest challenge. 

So here's a little bit of progress on one of my many pies. I found rug for the pink man cave. I'm going to come up with a better name for that room. Suggestions are welcome. I had the hardest time finding a big enough rug, in the right color, and for the right price. Finding a 8x10 or larger rug for less than $300 is hard. Finding one with pink in it, proved impossible. The rugs I really wanted were from Anthropologie (natch). They were also $1100. Eep.

I even ordered a wool rug from Overstock.com. It was hideous and I sent it back. Then last week, I was wandering through Target, when I stumbled on this rug. The color was perfect, even though the look was a little bit too cozy kitchen for me. The other problem was that the only size they had was 4X6. My mom had the brilliant idea to buy four of them and tape them together with carpet tape. I didn't have any carpet tape on hand, so I just used packing tape, which worked just fine. Presto Chango, I have an 8X12 rug that only cost $160! I bought a non slip rug pad, and put another chenille rug underneath it for a little more insulation from the cold concrete floor. 

I think the little bit of lavender grey in the rug picks up the same color from one of the silk trading company curtains I used to cover up the washer/dryer and water heater. Now all that's left is to hang pictures, and put in the skylight. It's almost perfect:)

One last sneaky peaky. This was how neat and tidy it looked before I filled it up with furniture.

quilting by candlelight

Before I was a complete invalid last night, I got a little bit of sewing done in the pink room. Nip and I turned on a movie, he laid on the couch while I sewed at the desk. I mentioned before that I don't know what I'm doing. I just cut strips out of some old Anokhi sarongs from Simrane in Paris, and some old Heather Ross Mendocino fabric. I also had an old Anthropologie dust ruffle that I cut up because it fit my color scheme. I'm just sort of making my own pattern as I go, loosely based on the mix tape pattern by Oh, Fransson! I love finding a new use for all these pretty fabrics. We'll see how it turns out. Besides pink.

You can thank me later ladies

I'm laid up in bed with a bad back. You remember that episode of Happy Days where Mr. Cunningham's back goes out, and he's there in the living room and he can't move? That was me this morning. Except there was no laugh track, and I was crying...hard, and making all kinds of involuntary pain sounds. I tried to crawl to the bathroom, but couldn't. I tried to stand up. Nope. Then I couldn't get into any position that didn't kill. Also when I cried it sent a shooting pain down my lower back into my hip. Good morning heartache indeed.

My mom took Jack to Palm Springs for the night. Nipper and I planned to go out to dinner, see a movie, maybe a matinee, get a whole bunch of stuff done. The best laid plans...

This picture of Alexander Skarsgard was on the cover of the LA Times style magazine this weekend. This along with a little flexiril, vicodin, and a xanax, is helping. But just a little bit. If you're having a bad day, this should cure what ails you.

Happy Monday!

The past three weeks, I've been mired in language like "transcode" and "frames per second" and "your hands are open and jazzy".  In other words, I've been in hell. Never mind that Jack hasn't slept through the night or stayed in his room for the last 10 days. So last week when I got an email from Jonathan Adler (my dear and personal friend) saying that he had some new needlepoint zodiac pillows, I thought "Mrs Nipper Knapp" you deserve a little treat!" So I ordered myself this little Leo pillow. I'm a Leo, can you tell? I try to quash my natural Leo tendencies, and be meek, and wishy washy, but after a while that makes my teeth gnash together and my hair stand on end. The pillow arrived Friday, just before our shoot. It's itty itty bitty and it's sitting on my jadite green eames rocker in the dining room. Ok, back to the gigahertz, and megawatts, and parabolic distortion. Send a medic!

Maybe Edison is ACDC

Oh Jack White, swoon...

So we are in the thick of finishing costumes, cutting out neon lightning bolts, rigging up low budget dolly tracks, and practicing our redonkulous dance moves. Sadie and I did a test run of our dance in heels on the brick patio in her backyard this morning. Her husband made pancakes, and we hooked up the ipod with Brett's version of the song to the speakers. I'm sure her neighbors were thrilled. Nothing like Lady Gaga at 8am. Here's what I have to say about our dancing: No one broke an ankle. 

Lucky lucky ducks that we are, it looks like it's going to rain all weekend. And since our Lady Gaga is going to be on the road with her band the next few weeks, it looks like we won't be able to shoot the exterior shots (dancing stuff) until the end of this month. SO we are going to have a few more weeks to practice the dance, and come up with new bizarre ways to pay homage to Lady Gaga, who Sadie and I admitted to each other this week we've come to love while doing this project. Her performance on Ellen alone was enough. She had me at the standing up on her piano bench singing solo. Adorable. I didn't know the first thing about her before we started. Not even sure how I heard the song for it to become enough a part of my subconscious that I would start writing my own lyrics to it one night in the kitchen. I was raised in a college town so my musical tastes were formed by New Order,  Siouxsie and the Banshees,  The Smiths, and The Misfits, (I turned into a martian, whoa oh oh...) and oh yeah, massive amounts of adolescent ennui. Bonjour Billie Holiday. Good Morning Heartache. Oh 1980's how I miss you so.

Maybe it was inevitable that I'd end up spending the first part of my 2010 glitter gluing Barbies, and supergluing them onto headbands, so that I could dress up like a pirate hooker in my bff's back yard and DANCE. Maybe my mother should have limited my musical experience to Wagner, and The New Kids on the Block. I could be married to a banker and wearing SLACKS on a Saturday. Speaking of my dear mother...

I've decided to use her in the video. She's spending the winter in Palm Springs, and I needed an older woman. Not an old woman, just someone older than me (fair enough). So she's game, and even willing to do a little bit of legwork for her costume. This morning, she was out shopping for a Ken Doll to glue onto HER headband (you see, there was NO chance of me turning out vanilla), and she sends me this text:

"Ken is honking huge.  Wouldn't you think there would be an Ellen D type looking Barbie that is normal size but could be ACDC.   Where the hell are the boy dolls?"

Who gets to have more fun than me? No one! That's who!

We looked like mental patients in our red carpet picture, so I'm showing you this one instead.  I think this pretty much captures the evening

Last week Sadie sent me an invite for a "Kick Ass Cake Bash" for the The Broke-Ass Bride. Sadie's agent is repping her, and there is a tv show (for TLC?) in the works. Things like this go on every night of the week in LA. It's hard for me to remember when I'm whiling away the hours knitting tea cozies, and shaking what my momma done gave me in spoof videos that this town's PR machine never stops rolling. I never leave the house after the sun goes down, but the lure of a good gift bag, and putting on a dress, and since this was a wedding-ish event, CAKE, I went. The gift bag wasn't anything to write home about, BUT there was a little tin of lip gloss. It's made by e.l.f. and it's called candy shop lip tin in frosting fanatic, and OH MY GOD, it smells JUST like something from my childhood. I don't know what. Some kind of kid make-up, or a strawberry shortcake doll, or maybe it was that peel off nail polish. I don't know. But I found it on their site this morning, and it's only $1. Check it. 

How pretty is this? I want my kitchen counter to look like this every morning!

We got our picture taken in a custom photo booth by Oh Snap Studios. (the picture up top) Which I think is the greatest idea ever. This is sort of like my backyard wedding backdrop on steroids. SO great. They have all kinds of different backdrops and a million props and disguises. If was getting hitched, or having a big party, I'd totally hire these guys.

The prettiest little cheesecake ever resting on my fishnetted leg. 

The only thing about going to these things is that it's a reminder of how big it all is, and how small we all are, and how incredibly silly almost everything about this town is. I wore my pale pink Rodarte for Target Ballerina dress that Keri tracked down for me in Denver, because every Target within 100 miles of LA had sold out of them. I wore it with a cute pale grey cardigan from Anthropologie, and my grey suede comptoir des cottonniers heels that make me feel like I'm my grandmother's daughter. In my mind, because this is a huge step up from the usual stretch pants and flashdance cut tshirt that I'm wearing 99% of the time, I thought I looked pretty good. 

But then you know, real WOMEN started to show up. The kind of women that aren't excited about $1 lip gloss from their childhood. They were never children. They are WOMEN. I swear these women only exist in LA. There's no way they could survive anywhere else. They'd walk into the A&P, and people would run for their lives. As they should. They're so pretty they're almost ugly. DO you know what I'm talking about? Like they're so tall and perfect, and CONFIDENT, because they are essentially god's perfect creature, that the moment you look at them, or they start to speak, you start making note of everything weird, or crazy, or imperfect about them. SO that in the span of 90 seconds, you've gone from having the wind knocked out of you because your eyes have never fallen upon a human being this stunning, to thinking, "Meh, she's an overplucked freak in a stilletos". Pure jealousy. You understand me, right?

Long story short, I put on perfume, ate some cake (a lot of cake), got some free swag, had a picture taken with Sadie that will make our grandkids wonder what the hell we were all about, and then came home and watched American Idol. Just like every night. Now back to my quilting...

I would like a wall of flowers like this, and I would like someone to carry it around behind me at all times. 

making rag dolls in the loony bin

Ok, so I have to admit that I've been letting the stress get to me. I need to get a grip. I'm not curing cancer over here. Nobody's life is at stake. I told Sadie that I feel like I'm shouting at myself  "I WANT THE TRUTH" and then myself is yelling back at me "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!" Dude, chill. 

Yesterday I was at the gym doing a guilt workout so that I could say that I had lost at least a half a pound for the biggest loser dealie (I did!). I was also trying to blow off some steam because when I woke up, I couldn't turn my head from side to side, after doing our first dance rehearsal, which made me feel old and craggy. Just about everything everyone says to me makes me want to unhinge my jaw and shout "I'm all full thanks, leave your card by the door". 

Today instead of buying a HDMI to mini HDMI cable, painting fiber board lightning bolts, and learning what it means to transcode, I went into the pink man cave and ironed. That's right. I said it. I IRONED. I got out some of my old sarongs that Nip and I bought at Simrane in Paris before Jack was born. I bought tons of them, but the pink ones I wore the most (obv) and they've gotten so worn, that they're pretty faded, and some have ripped. I ironed them, and then cut them into strips so that I can make a quilt. I thought I'd mix in some of Heather Ross Mendocino fabric too. Yeah, no, I don't know how to quilt, but why should that stop me? I don't know how to act, or shoot music videos, or write songs, or take pictures, or make cakes, or be a mom, or really do much of anything at all. But the idea of doing all those things keeps me interested. SO I ironed and I felt better. 

SO back to the day before at the gym. I was on the treadmill, and because I felt like I needed to maximize the use of my time, I decided to practice my Lady Gaga dance moves (at least the arm movements) on the treadmill. Yeah, that's right, I don't give a damn what kind of crazy I look like, I'm a MOM. SO I'm there, happily walking, watching the tutorial on my iphone propped up on the magazine rack on the treadmill. I've got my headphones on, I'm pop and locking, and as I bring my arms down in front of me, I get them caught up in the headphone wires. The earbuds jerk out of my ears, and the phone tumbles to the ground. The moving sidewalk underneath me, I fumble to grab the headphone, or phone, anything, and as I do, I KICK the phone. KICK it, like I was Pelé, and lucky me, the treadmill is located on the balcony overlooking the weight room, and over it goes. In slow motion I watch my 2nd iphone set sail, and as I'm on a treadmill, it takes me a second to smash the stop button, jump off, race to the banister, and see, is it dead?  There it is, on the ground. I look around, did anyone see that? On top of being the psycho loser doing bad dance moves on the treadmill, I am now the psycho loser asking some meathead to keep an eye on my phone, until I can come down and retrieve it. This guy, whose neck is at least as wide as my waist, grunts enough of an acknowledgment. I grab my bag, and run down the stairs, pick the phone off the floor. It's still playing the Lady Gaga tutorial, and besides having some serious gym rat cooties, it's fine. Hoorah! AND...scene. Please tip your waiter on the way out. 

So you think you can dance?

Warning: If you are a mostly sedentary 30 something year old woman, who's last dance experience was in the Nutcracker when you were 11; skipping over teen night "dancing" at the Nectarine Ballroom when you were 14, because that mostly consisted of shifting your weight from one hip to the other, arms at your side, eyes scanning, mouth aloof; you should NOT spend two hours of your Sunday doing this:

And you should definitely not do it, without stretching, and then have a giant glass of Trader Joe's syrah, and go to bed. I'm just saying, you can try it. I'm hoping some of you do. I think I burned some calories, so at least I accomplished one thing on my to do list this week. There is however, a small chance that you will wake up in the middle of the night with a toddler sleeping on your face, totally unable to move your neck. No big deal.

I think it's going to be really sexy on Saturday when I'm dancing in my pink lamé tube top and my bedazzled neck brace. SO geriatric Gaga. Ok back to gluing mesh thongs on my Barbies, and brushing out my wigs.

Book worm

Jack has handled the transition from his crib to his new bed in his new room like a champ. He's also been surprisingly obedient about staying in his room until Boo, his monkey alarm clock "wakes up" at 7, even though we suspect he's in there at 6am playing. Until yesterday that is. I made the mistake of telling another mom that he doesn't seem to know that he can get out of his room or hasn't tried anyway. Why did I do that? I said it all self deprecatingly, like "oh he's too dumb to realize he's free" so it wouldn't come off as braggy. But the universe knows. 

That night, Nipper and I went to dinner at a place downtown called Bottega Louie. It was amazing! We had portobello mushroom fries, and corn with bacon and swiss chard, and a rocket salad, and chicken with lemon and capers, and pasta with rib-eye and swiss chard, and a chocolate souffle, and WHOLE bottle of Magnificat meritage. Whoops. Oh, and they have french style macaroons, and their boxes look very laduree-ish. 

We came home, and I immediately passed out on the couch watching American Idol. I'm really romantic like that.  First time we've been out since the infamous Christmas date, and I'm like Gary Busey on a Tuesday. Jack's nanny Brenda had put him to bed, which has only ever happened one other time in his life. SO around 1:30 in the morning, Jack wakes up, thinks, "Are mommy and daddy still gone?" get's up, walks into the hallway, then, stunned, he says, standing in our bedroom, "Hey! I just opened that door". Sigh... I cursed myself, took two advil, and lay awake the next two hours, as Jack went back to sleep ON Nippers head, and the two of them battled for mattress real estate and who can snore the loudest. Jack won. 

Before he made his big break I was finding stuff like this when I went into his room in the morning:

Yes, the iphone, and the helicopters are in there, but also BOOKS! And a flashlight! Could it be I already have a little reader? Is he too young to be reading under the covers with a flashlight? Do kids even do that anymore? More likely he was using the flashlight to "shoot" something, but a mom can dream.  When I was very small we lived in a small town, right next door to the public library, which was also very small. The librarian had to make a rule that I was not allowed take out books and return them on the same day. I would walk over, get a stack, take them back to my room, where I would curl up in my closet and read them. She also had to make a rule that I wasn't allowed to eat red pistachios and read her books. Somewhere out there, are a whole slew of public library books with tiny pink fingerprints all over them.