fitforafemme.com

Bonjour! It’s been awhile! We were very busy touring the tomboy’s niece around San Francisco over the weekend, and with exciting new goings-on, to be announced shortly.

Japantown in the rain!
Shopping at Bloomingdale’s downtown!
Introducing the young one to Thai food and soju cocktails for the very first time!
A gorgeous, light-filled break in the rain at one of the city’s prettiest, best kept secret vistas!
Hanging out with glamorous lesbians (and some much less glamorous) at a new girl party in SF’s Mission District!
Cocktails with chocolate pot de creme and an insanely good sheep’s milk cheese plate with fig cakes and walnut bread in Hayes Valley!

And that was only Friday! Phew!

Saturday was filled with shenanigans in the Castro and the obligatory drive up to Twin Peaks (since the skies had cleared but left a mean chill in the air), then onto Ocean Beach through Golden Gate Park’s incredible tulip gardens next to the old windmill, and a tour of the Presidio topped with an incredible Central-South American tapas dinner where the Mission meets Market Street.

Sunday brought a mellower pace, with walkabouts through North Beach on a gloriously sunny day for a late lunch, and through the Mission for the murals and, of course, Secret Breakfast ice cream.

Nouvelle Vague’s cover of Dancing With Myself came on while M snapped all these pictures, so I’ll play it here for you in case you haven’t seen it yet (for it is highly watchable and will make you feel like dancing or smoking or both!):

I love my city!

CONFESSION: Happy New Year, everyone! We hope that yours were as safe and silly and as full of love and joy as ours was. Cheers to a stylish and prosperous new year – welcome, 2010!

CONFESSION: Impromptu FFAF photo shoots are the best. We were on our way to BART to catch Where The Wild Things Are downtown, when we passed this relatively empty laundromat. It was so much fun, right down to jumping into one of the carts, playing shooter games and the old-timey Soap Stop (below). I realize the key missing component is the fact that we were just passing through, not doing any actual laundry (which I abhor), but still. SUPERFUN.

I cried and cried and cried through not only the trailers (that Sandra Bullock one and the Baby(ies) documentary – have you seen or heard of it? – it’s about the first year of life for four babies being raised in four very different corners of the world; San Francisco, Mongolia, Nambia and Japan), but through a bunch of the scenes in the movie as well. It was so great. I loved it. Max was fantastic.

SCENT: I really want this Victoria’s Secret experiment to be over and done with. You know, just the other day I was recalling my past refusal to walk away from something until I was absolutely convinced I had exhausted every available option (and unavailable, for that matter) and how absurd, unnecessary and masochistic it was, and this experiment is giving me the nagging s(c)en(t)sation that old habits die hard. So, it’s much too late to undo today’s torture, but I cannot promise completion at this juncture, folks.

Without further ado, I give you Dream Angels Divine and Very Sexy Hot. The former is awful and harsh. If powder settled into crepe-y skin could be bottled and made into a WMD, Divine is it. Vile. VS Hot comes out with a few intriguing top notes – marigold, freesia, berry (note again the lack of specificity regarding type)- but never softens into something softer and more complex, it just stays sharp and not in a good way.

HISSYFIT CONFESSION: Last night M saunters in from her poker game at work, grinning even though she didn’t win, a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte in hand (they give her one every year on her anniversary), talking about how she was invited at the last minute to a work excursion ON A YACHT for a CHAMPAGNE LUNCH during the first real BLUE ANGELS SHOW of FLEET WEEK on the bay. It was for everyone on the team of a specific project she wasn’t on, but had put in so much work on that they wanted to include her, which is super awesome. Not so awesome? She couldn’t take me with her, obviously! Pout, pout, pout.

No matter that I’d been geeking out on the air shows all day long and had pretty much memorized the schedule. Thursday, noon – practice. Friday, 2PM – practice, 3PM – show. Saturday…you get the picture. Anyway, I decided to put my big girl panties on and go with her today no matter what. My plan was to send her off and then find a nice spot on the wharf somewhere to watch all by lonesome. With a flask, preferably. M threatened to kill me if I let any hot tomboy pilots pick me up and take me for a ride, though, so there went that plan! (Pfft…whatever happened to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?)

Tune back in tomorrow for more pics and the rest of the story. Yes, I’m a tease. I know. But the tomboy just made a round of cosmos and it’s urgent. And guess what?! Sunday = cowgirls, go-carts and In & Out for a very special birthday girl’s celebrations. It’s going to be a good weekend, y’all. Have fun!

CONFESSION: Check-out at Hotel Vertigo. Super dreamy lobby. You can read more about it here, if you’d like. We are up and at ‘em on approximately 4-5 hrs. of sleep and absolutely pining for donuts and coffee. We weren’t sure how nightmarish the Love Parade malarkey would be, so we just dashed out of there right before noon and headed to our favorite Noe Valley donut shop. They have Peerless coffee there! A plus. Let’s see if you can guess what I’m thinking as I gaze fondly down upon that polished, gorgeous hunk of wood.

CONFESSION: It was so Fall on this day! Monday, to be exact. I used to loathe the grey + ivory combination, but I am for it this season, especially if you swap the predictable dash of mustard with a nice, predictable and lush rose instead. Ideally, in some sort of ridiculously lavish, ruffled suede. Mm. I guess I’m sort of a moron for not throwing on my pink posie Tulle coat on over this. Next time!

CONFESSION: We discovered that M hates shooting at night and Halloween today. I know, right? OK, so night shooting is HARD and a pain in the ass, but hating Halloween? I think I should remind her about candy corn and slutty costumes bonding with loved ones in a creepy way. In any case, I can’t let her hate Halloween until we’ve dressed up as Moroccan Tranny Patsy and Edina first. It’s our dream! I had fun on the night shoot; we explored the creepy alley across the street and I pretended to be scary and chased kittens around.

NOTE: I gave y’all a three-for-one because even though they were different pairs of jeans, they were still jeans. Never fear (esp. not you, H), I had heels on in both of the above and a brand spankin’ new pair of hella fierce Betsey Johnson tights that are dying to debut themselves.

QUERY: An extremely lovely and devoted reader recently wondered if I might do a Q & A here at FFAF, and you know what I thought? I thought I would, if you’d like. Feel free to send burning questions to fitforafemme@gmail.com and I’ll answer enthusiastically and in bulk to the best of my ability!

CONFESSION: Despite the return of the fog (which also hosed my beachy wave plans for yesterday) and the fact that I cannot take BART like I want to into Oakland because our SF parking permits still haven’t arrived, today was excellent! The morning coffee was delicious, I was productive before leaving for an appointment in the East Bay, my amazing threader at The Brow Lounge saw me even though I was 15 minutes late (I went to the wrong location, and yes, I will continue to see her as she has been the boss of my eyebrows for, like, four whole years – the second longest long-term commitment of my life after M, if you must know).

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CONFESSION: Well, kittens, the weekend is winding to a close. It was a doozy! We restocked the bar at home and hunted for antiques and thrift store finds on Friday night. Saturday morning we tidied up for a nice, mellow Welcome Back visit for a dear friend, who just returned from her two-month long visit back home in Turkmenistan. She brought me back a beautiful bag, repurposed from the gorgeous material of a traditional bridal headress – will feature in a new FFAF ASAP! Sadly, during the visit a nasty migraine came on quite suddenly, but I fought it back with insanely spicy Indian food (a total first and kind of amazing). Later in the evening, M & I headed to the DNA Lounge for New Wave City in these outfits! It was the Duran Duran tribute and so, so much fun. A little too fun, in fact, so M & I spent the entire delicious day in bed, giggling and watching HGTV and taking naps. WHY DID I NOT KNOW THAT HGTV IS SO FASCINATING AND AWESOME TO WATCH!? Speaking of hella gay…

This antique table? See how pretty and awesome it is? The top is all junked up, so we got it for $50. Totally freaking hot. We’re going to sand it down and give it a nice, light wash and perhaps get in touch with the amazing artist that painted the Victorian Alice In Wonderland chairs to see if she’ll paint the tabletop with a tea party scene, because that would be, of course, perfect. I also got the really cool idea to take these three smaller photo frame collages and hang them in a grouping, inside of the antique frame that we picked up a year ago at the Laney flea. Since we took all of those silly, romantical photos carrying the frame together the day we were married last year, I thought it would be very dreamy to mix those photos with some others from our wedding. There you have it! The “nook of love”. Who wants to come over for a cup of tea?