Eat the Damn Cake

Guys! I’m so excited about this giveaway! It’s jewelry from Ball + Chain that’s sort of a little bit 4th of July themed.

Check it out:

I asked Ball + Chain to describe what they do. They said:

Ball + Chain sells the latest fashions and trends in jewelry and accessories.  A business brewed by best-friends, Ball + Chain offers frugal fashionistas style at a price they can afford…because it is a price they choose to pay!

Every Tuesday we host a NAME YOUR PRICE auction at 8pm CST.  During each auction fans bid on items up for sale. If we can meet their proposed price, they “win”!  We also offer FREE SHIPPING on all sales.

Our facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/shopballandchain/info. And our “How to Bid” tab offers further information on the bidding process.

To enter this giveaway, “like” their Facebook page and comment on this post to let me know you’re in. I’ll pick a winner on Sunday, the 30th, and let you know who it is on Monday. Good luck!

(Oh, and so sad, as usual, but you have to be in the USA to have the prize mailed to you. But if you are somewhere else and there’s someone here who can receive it, definitely do that. Or even if you’re going to be in NYC sometime soon, you can have it mailed to me. I will only wear it a little)

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Unroast: Today I love the way I look in a cuff bracelet. Like that one. SO NICE.

This piece appeared originally in Thought Catalog, but I wanted to share it here in full, because I told you guys I was going to apply, and I was all excited about it, and here is the sad ending to that little story about me trying for a second to be a good person. 

I am good with children. And I’m not just saying that — there’s real evidence. I ran a summer camp for little kids when I was fifteen. I tutored 12-year-olds at my synagogue for seven years, and once I overheard one of them in the hall saying to her friend, “Kate is the coolest teacher. You’ll see, when you get her next year.” I felt like I’d just won a gold medal for being awesome at life. Or, you know, teaching.

I like kids. I want to have them one day. Sometimes I feel strangely confident when I think about being a mother. More confident than I feel when I’m faced with something like weird colored water coming out of the shower or the question of which recycling bin to put the egg carton in. Raising an entire child? Bring it.

But something just happened to me that has shaken my confidence and tested my faith. Big Brothers Big Sisters rejected me.

(I want to! I want to start something! And I can play a couple chords on the guitar!! I have stuff to offer!)

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winner announced at the bottom of this post!

I love giving stuff away. I also like sharing food. I am that person who will always have a sip of your drink when you politely offer, and will always try your dinner, when you so much as hint at it being open to the public. I will also put my drink and my pasta in the middle of the table, and say, “Seriously, guys, everyone have some.” And I will mean it wholeheartedly. Eat my pasta, people!

Sometimes, instead of rifling through my old clothes and bagging the stuff I don’t want, I just lead a friend to my closet and suggest things for her to try on.

Giving away clothes is the best.

So I love this kind of giveaway, obviously. The kind I’m doing here, again, with eShakti. Remember eSkakti? They customize everything. They have every size. They have gorgeous stuff. It’s pretty much the best.

So we’re doing a little contest. If you win, you get to pick something, basically anything, from the site. Only restriction: it can’t be jewelry/an accessory, or from the Overstock section. So that leaves you with…A LOT of stuff.

Some examples of stuff on the site:

(source)

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This piece also appears on HuffPost

I took my body for a walk.

It was wearing a long white dress that clung up top and on the butt and then stretched for the ground, slinging itself over the occasional active knee.

Its breasts would not do real cleavage. Unless I hoisted the bra up. You have to catch them right. It’s this complicated thing. You have to sort of scoop them in and up. And then they slip out of position again, and it’s gone.

Its rounded arms were bared, because of the heat. Which is unusual. I thought, with slight dread, oh no, it’s only the beginning of the warm season. I will have to bare the arms so much more.

Its belly made a little puffy circle just below the belt, which was pretending that there was no belly, because belts pretend that.

Its legs might not have been long enough for real grace. But they were mostly hidden, anyway. The polish was chipping on its unruly toenails at the ends of its squarish feet.

I could feel that its neck looked awkward, so I tried to stand up straighter, but then I’d forget. I didn’t want the head and neck combination to look like a turtle. I thought there was a chance that it might be looking like a turtle already. That maybe it was impossible for it not to look like one, because of the construction of the head and neck areas. Something to do with the raised lump at the base of the neck, a protuberance of opinionated spine.

I walked my body past some men. I didn’t look to see if they were looking at it. I thought I could feel eyes, but it felt awkward to know. Almost as though I might be able to read their thoughts, and maybe they would be rating my body, and maybe it would only be scoring midrange.

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My best title ever, right?

I don’t think I can naturally “pull it off.”

I almost never have the things that magazines say you’re supposed to have when you do anything I want to do with my appearance. When you wear a short dress or cut off your hair or do bright lipstick or long dresses or whatever.

Honestly, I have no idea what my “look” is. You know, like preppy chic or flowy hippie or electric hipster or fairy grunge or urban hillbilly runway. I don’t even know what I look like. (And also, I don’t know anything about style. But I want to see what urban hillbilly runway would look like.)

Who the hell knows what they really look like?

(source)

Isn’t it always different? Isn’t it different in different lights, in the mirror in the bathroom as opposed to the snide mirror in the hall as opposed to the generous mirror against the back wall? Isn’t it different in every photo? Some of them are downright cruel—that doesn’t count as a smile! Am I being possessed by some sort of really petty demon?—some of them are almost decent.

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Note: To the commenters who recommended “ear planes” to me, when I was sick and traveling last week and my ears were being destroyed by being on a plane, THANK YOU. I found some, in Amsterdam, and they saved my life on the way back. What would I do without you guys? “Stupid name,” I said, of the ear planes, “But best thing ever.” “I don’t know,” said Bear. “I think the name is brilliant. How will you ever forget it?” 

I am unable to clip my cat’s nails. I can’t do it.

“Just massage her paws while you’re petting her,” the vet said. “She’ll get used to you touching them.”

She didn’t get used to it, and also, I didn’t feel like massaging her paws very much. So maybe that’s why. But mostly I’m going to blame her, because she doesn’t like having her paws touched. She looks at me like, “Seriously? Why are you so weird?” And I don’t blame her.

So I was spending another $20 to have the vet weird her out instead of me.

And while I was sitting there in the waiting room, I overheard a conversation between one of the receptionists and another woman, who had just explained that she was a first grade teacher from West Virginia, who was visiting her daughter, who is a vet.

“I need some advice,” the receptionist was saying. “The teacher called and said there’s something wrong with my son. He is a loner. What do you do about a loner?”

“Well,” the teacher said in a soothing, teacherly voice, “That doesn’t mean anything is wrong. Maybe he just likes to be by himself.”

“But his teacher is worried,” said the receptionist. “He’s not normal. And in the pictures of the class, where they’re all playing together, he’s off by himself. He even told the teacher that he’d rather play alone.” There was a desperate note in her voice.

(source)

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This is a guest post from Fraylie. I love the way she writes, which is why I have her on here so often.

Last week, my roommate, Jessica, and I sat in a Union Square coffee shop while donning two newly purchased felted wool hats. Jessica’s was a demure dusty rose with an elegant grosgrain hatband in “whiskey.” Mine looked like Indiana Jones had stumbled onto a Vogue cover shoot, unsuccessfully trying to appear brooding and coquettish. We were sipping hot chocolate (because that’s what damsels in hats drink) while waiting for a screening of The Hunger Games and my inevitable need to feel awkwardly attracted to the baby faced Peeta Mellark.

Forever alone, I joked. I exaggerated the sigh preceding my habitual quip with Jessica when we talk about our prolonged illness called singledom.

Two thirty-something women sat beside us. I heard one of them say to the other well why don’t you just try OkCupid? Jessica and I bit our lips and looked at each other sympathetically. We had both forayed into that online cornucopia of lovelorn couch surfers with poor results. Before I had time to put my foot in my mouth, I leaned over in their direction.

“Don’t do it,” I chirped, pulling at the brim of my hat. Half expecting my comment to go unnoticed, I was surprised by their enthusiasm during what became an hour-long conversation about finding love in New York City.

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