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This is M’s shovel, and it ain’t good for much but slicing someone’s face open if need be. What the hell happened to the rest of it? I don’t even know why she’s got it out there in the garden.

I used to have a real good friend from the South, she was a bone fide Cajun freeze-dried whackaloon from Louisiana. (I’m not saying all y’all are crazy, it’s just the concentration is particularly high there. Bless it.) Anyway, any time some foolish ass fucked with one of us (one of her beloved friends), she’d drawl “Ladies, all we need is a pick-up truck, a shovel and a tarp, and we’ll make sure he never bothers anybody again” long before the Dixie Chicks sang about it. She was great. (And then she was crazy, but you never felt anything less than fiercely loved and adored when you were around her.)

Isn’t that lemon tree just magical?

We’re in this weird flux between Winter chill and Spring sunshine. At moments today I could have bounced around bare-legged. At others it rained and I wondered whether or not leaving my umbrella in the car had been foolish. I’m sick of watching my eager beaver Spring wardrobe sit in the closet and get neglected, so I threw on this dress over leggings and paired it with my super soft, dreamy, nautical boyfriend cardigan. Whatever, as long as we’ve still got firewood and kindling and such.

DO YOU LIKE MY NEW BAG?

I’m in love with it. It’s the Billie satchel from Christopher Kon’s Co-Lab line. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Something roomy and versatile, simple and in the buff. My other bags are definitely going to be jealous, but those are the breaks. D E A L. Also? I hate myself for this, I really do, but I just made M watch Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle with me all the way through, and GOD DAMN IT I liked it. A lot. Shame on me.

In slightly more cultured news, our book club has selected Little Bee by Chris Cleave (I prefer the original UK title, The Other Hand) for our next book. This should outshine The Help by a mile at least, but I’m hoping it does so by many more. I still have to wrap up the amazing Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, which puts me at just two books behind for my 2011 promise to read one book per week.

Now that I’m no longer on vile BART twice daily for 30 minutes each way for work, it’s really cut into my daily reading time! Boo-hoo.

The rest of it is simple, really:

Nautical boyfriend cardigan: Aerie
Dress: H&M
Flats: Gap

We had a very nice weekend. It’s interesting the way the fog works down in the lower bits of California. It’s nothing like up here. We’d wake up, step out onto our private balcony in our fluffy shocking white terry cloth robes and slippers, bemoan that somehow the cold had tailed us all the way down the coast, and then BOOM! they’d dissipate into fluffy wisps and trail lazily while the sun blazed down on us, by God.

Our suite was bigger than our flat (but smaller than our old loft). It’s humbling to come home from.

Thus, I’ve informed M that I insist on getting a king-sized bed when we move.

Her response was, “Why? Even when we sleep in one we only use half of it.”

D R A T S.

How handsome and serious does M look here, all tucked into this nook? I think it’s a little bit amusing that we both brought such dire reading to our mini-break weekend: The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker and What Is the What by Dave Eggers.

I also brought with me four tiny vials filled with fragrance (which I haven’t mentioned in quite some time, to my own dismay and that of others). You newcomers may not know that I used to regularly write reviews of scents at FFAF. Sometimes M would, too (those would always be of the masculine variety – most of mine are feminine or unisex). I’m going to make a real effort to reintroduce that aspect here, because it’s a lot of fun and I think scent is an important part of one’s self-expression.

You can read about the four fragrances here (as well as get some “vintage” FFAF from early 2009!):

Pillow of Flowers from Parfums d’Armando Martinez
Coup de Fouet from Caron
Cuir Ambre from Prada
Un Lys from Serge Lutens

Outfits! I am wearing my Runaway Pony dress with a belt I snagged from Fred Flare, and I topped it all off with a vintage clutch and these super hot, sherbet-esque Enzo Angiolini strappy sandals.

M’s got on Calvin Klein slacks, an RVCA dress shirt and Zara shoes. Both the tie and tie clip are vintage.

I’d love to stick around, but ZOMG Gossip Girl starts in, like, ten minutes.

(M in “resort” wear and I am in sundry Liberty of London for Target bits.)

Howdy, kittens! This day was strange. It began shrouded in fog and sadly, a local tragedy. When we woke up this morning, we could hear the non-stop fog horns on all the cargo ships out in the bay, coming and going from the Port of Oakland, under the Golden Gate Bridge. We’re pretty far from the water, so it was kind of spooky and magical. M got the alert about the power being down as she dropped me off at the office (wearing a sweater!), and headed back home to wait it out while I worked.

Fast-forward four or so hours. 30 minutes south a town and company on the cusp of their IPO and surely the family of the crash victims began to pick up the pieces. The lethal fog had lifted completely, leaving the sweet, warm sun to shine down on the city. It lapped it up. M picked me up. We lapped it up! She and I decided a day this spectacular didn’t deserve squandering, and so we packed up and headed out into the world for a reading date. Our first thought was Atlas Cafe – they have such a great little back patio. Then, I remembered Pilsner Inn’s lovely little courtyard and we decided reading over beers at 3PM was far superior to reading over iced mochas. Alas, Pilsner Inn had workers toiling away back there, with loud machines and sawdust (and carting in, I think, a Creature from the Black Lagoon arcade game!), so we bid the bartender adieu and made our way down the street.

After snapping a few pics of intriguing local scenery (cherry blossoms, painted deer (above, being air-shot by M), scooters with giant wooden boxes affixed to the rear), I remembered Cafe Flore in the Castro! It was perfect. We quickly took up a carafe of margaritas and a small table. Nouvelle Vague played quietly in the back of my mind. The sky shone blue, blue, blue and it was heavenly.

Two more days until Flourish’s one-year anniversary party! It’s going to be fabulous. We can’t wait.

PS. I know. I pegged my jeans. I couldn’t help it. I felt a gripping need to show some ankle.