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It’s hump day. There should be more humping on hump day. In spite of sundry fencing injuries and bruises. Don’t you agree? Yes.

A N Y W A Y.

Meet my “Peggy Olson” dress. Isn’t it divine? It’s the plaid, it’s the Peter Pan collar, it’s the neat little trim around the waist like a built-in belt that mirrors the detail at the neck, it’s the demure length. I adore it. It is quite possibly the most twee dress I own!

Here are some of Peggy’s notoriously plaid looks for reference:

Side note: I bet her bangs drove/drive her bloody batty!

How are folks liking this season so far, anyway? (What on earth do I mean, “so far” – isn’t the next episode the season finale? It all came and went much too quickly!) Has anyone read the Washington Post piece on how Mad Men is television’s most feminist show? Agree? Disagree?

My first thought is how my friends and I have known for quite some time – perhaps as far back as the end of the second season – that Sally was the real one to watch for any substantial feminist cues and interest. The bits about women from that era being unable to watch it saddened me, but I think I managed to convince my mom (who is possibly Sally all grown up herself, age-wise) to start watching it on Sunday night, when we drove out for a deliciously listless visit involving grilled meats, homemade cheesy potato and ham soup, tiramisu and passionate, thoughtful discourse on current events.

Speaking of my mom, her sister and my dearest aunt would have turned 71 years old this past weekend, had she survived her very long and mostly triumphant battle with breast cancer. Let it be known that for the vast majority of my formative years, she kicked the crap out of cancer like a fearsome, beautiful goddess. She barely bat an eyelash, at least as far as I could tell, and the end was fast and vicious, quietly vicious.

She was an incredible woman. My mom sent me an email that her cousin wrote her recently – she’s 70 years old and the daughter of my maternal grandfather’s brother – and it was so dreamy that I had to share a bit with you:

Judy was born in 1939 so she was about a year older than me.  I just loved her to pieces.  She was my idol.  When I was in my freshman year, I stayed with you and your family for a week.  I had the best time ever.  That was when she was going with Rudy E.  It is just amazing what a person remembers about their teenage years.  But I started thinking about Judy and I thought I might share a few memories of our little girl days.

There’s more, but that bit is a gem. The rest is a bit wilder, believe it or not!

Dress: E. C. Star
Pumps:  Max Studio
Braided Leather Headband: H&M

HELLO THERE. How the hell are you? It’s Memorial Day, are you enjoying yourselves? We are. It’s been a merry four-day weekend, and we’ve managed to perfect the balance between being lazy and resting without missing this wondrous sun gracing the rain-soaked city, running to and fro. If you’d asked me if I thought it would get hot enough to wear these shorts this weekend, I probably would have popped you one. M’s been dying to wear hers for at least a month.

These photos are from the little walkabout we took BEFORE our massive, late sunny afternoon Pimm’s Cups.

I don’t know about y’all, but M’s outfit here makes me think of tag football, grass stains and making out at dusk on a park bench. We both took advantage of the RVCA Memorial Day sale, and M scored this new shirt. Mine is also new and the lightest, softest silk-cotton blend. It’s, like, the perfect shirt for dancing around braless with no pants and a whiskey coke in your hand, on the hottest summer nights.

We found this spot in a narrow alley behind a mortuary near our place. I don’t understand this shelf or why it’s placed here, sandwiched between garages and trash bins of all things, but there it was, little Lady of Guadalupe and all. Perhaps people put candles on it and pray or something. How nice! While I pondered all of this very seriously, M snapped photos. Obviously. My favorite thing of all on our walk is the sidewalk graffiti a bit further down. They’re so lovely! Sometimes I think we’ve got the most delightful graffiti of all here, underfoot and ever-changing.

You didn’t think I’d mention it and not post the video, did you?

Confession: You are about to know WAY more about 1. Lush henna hair dye and 2. my night last night than you ever, ever wanted to know. Get cozy, stay awhile. Before I tell that story, I must share the link to the new LGBT Pride Month Proclamation from President Obama posted on the whitehouse.gov website yesterday. It pleases me – I still need to see more significant action, but I am pleased. Especially with this part (bolding mine):

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

Back to the story. M is in Phoenix on business and last night seemed like the perfect time to commit to appx. 8 hrs. of semi-risky hair experimentation. The objective: To make my newly cut hair shinier (yes, shinier) and a little bit richer and more even in color via one bar of Lush’s Caca Brun Hair Mama Henna. I really wanted to NOT dump more chemicals into my hair b/c, well, it’s gross and not conducive to shininess. Pursuant to the overall advice of countless forum and comment posts I researched, I chucked the bar into the blender with a freshly brewed 1/2 pot of delicious coffee, observed the fact that once blended to the consistency of brownie or cake batter, it looks JUST LIKE GREEN BABY POOP and went to town thoroughly applying the dye with gloves out of my DIY bain marie.

No more than 10-15 minutes after committing my head to a slimy-but-gritty green beehive wrapped tightly with plastic cling wrap, ready for a full night’s sleep, did our building’s fire alarm go off. Dudes, seriously? I was like Eminem on MTV Movie Awards Night: ARE YOU SERIOUS!? ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!??!?!?!?!?!?! Eff. My. Life. It was so worst case scenario it’s not even funny. I got the petite up. Got the puppies together. Grabbed my documents and phone and rummaged through M’s things to put on one of her beanies – A FUCKING BEANIE!!! – over the slime-hive of baby poop death and schlepped downstairs, where all 60 or so of our neighbors waited for the fire dept. to come and investigate and then finally turn the deafening alarms off. When I say deafening, I am not kidding. That shit is louder than standing right in front of a speaker at a Sonic Youth show, and shrill as hell. It cannot possibly be within legal decibel levels.

I suppose I should note that it is common knowledge that REAL fires would trigger the overhead sprinklers, so the only real danger was my total and utter embarrassment. The bldg. was cleared within 10-15 minutes, in the meantime I cooed soothing things to the puppy and repeatedly asked my petite if slime was oozing out of the hat anywhere. She said no, but she was also sleepily giggling at me. Once we were safely back in our loft, I tried to sleep, but woke up every 30 or so minutes from 12:30AM through 5:30AM, at which point I could no longer stand it and got up to rinse all the dye out and shower, while M slept just as fitfully from her hotel room in Phoenix because we are awesomely pathetic like that. She watched an Arizona sunrise, I obtained shinier, more uniform dark brown hair with soft hints of auburn.

But you’ll have to wait until my next blog post to see it!

More fun facts about Lush hair dye:

• They come in four colors – rouge/red, marron/chestnut, noir/black and brun/brown. The results vary wildly by hair type, condition and natural color, but the guarantees are pretty much that your hair will be: shinier, healthier, chemical-free, in terms of color, richer and multi-dimensional.
• People experiment wildly with these – adding DIY, at-home ingredients like paprika, lemon juice, cloves, etc. to the mix and swapping plain hot or boiling water with brewed coffee, red zinger or chamomile or black tea, etc. depending on your desired result. Oils like olive or lavender are also popular additions, as much for shine as texture or scent.
• Next time, I’d probably do a 2:1 ratio of marron:brun or even marron:rouge over my dark, dark hair, because it really seems to make the strands pop like whoa. I envy like hell any blondes/dirty blondes who can get away with their reds – the results are simply stunning, provided you have healthy hair and a decent cut to start with. Like Tori Amos stunning.
• It also seems like some of the added ingredients are meant to help with the smell, which folks whine about A LOT, but for me it was just like an especially earthy and damp green tea.
• Another thing I’d do different next time is buy a few empty hair dye applicator bottles from the beauty store, fill them up with the hot henna mix, and plunk ‘em into near-boiling water (bain marie or whatnot) to make application easier. It’s messier than regular dye, but not THAT much messier.
• People also seem to get more intense results when they babysit it with a blow dryer every 30 minutes or so for 2-3 hrs., as opposed to no heat overnight, like I did, so I’d probably try that as well.

Confession: Tracy at Sole Salon on Bay Street, I love you. Thank you for making sure that my hair is absolutely perfect. You totally made my Summer / Spring 2009. Do y’all know what I did this morning? I showered, twisted a fistful of hair on each side of my part back and clipped it, and pinned the rest up into a messy chignon and set off for a meeting in SF. I put nothing into it except a dollop of shine serum. Several hours later, when I unpinned it, I had the loose, soft-as-hell, shiny waves of a fucking goddess. They were almost spiral waves, in some places. This is totally, totally, totally not even reality in my hair world, except now it IS, thanks to her. I have no idea what she did, but I’m never leaving. HEAR THAT, TRACY!? You’re stuck with me. You’re the one. Incredible. It’s effortless. Effortless! I would do the exact same thing with my hair pre-Tracy and not achieve anything near what I can now.

And that was before she really perfected it a few hours ago this evening. Now my hair is the ultimate force to be reckoned with. Well, it will be after I Lush it to death. That is neither here nor there.

When: First day of the new year, 2009.

What: Dreamy Sonic Youth canvas tote from a show of theirs in the early 2000s, M’s captain hat, rust cotton t-shirt from Michael Stars, black wool sweater with holy stripes from some aspiring local designer I did a shoot for forever ancient history ago, skinny jeans from Zara, over-the-knee black Italian leather boots from Lamica.

Scent: I foolishly felt that I was on a roll with masculine scents, so I gave Parfum d’Orsay’s Le Dandy Pour Homme a whirl. I felt thrown abruptly back into ye ole straight days, suffocated by some clingy, insufferable male. (Is that awful? So.) The notes are described as “tobacco flower, whiskey, a heart of spice with ginger, and lower notes of wood and balsam.” It made me want to hurl a teacup at somebody!

I’m sure it would be delicious on M, however, and it was boozy but ultimately I wanted to scrub it off right away. Perhaps I’ll have her try it on tomorrow and she can co-author a second review!

Confession: I hope everyone had a fantastical night last night! Happy New Year, my delightful readers! The tomboy and I stayed in and kept a stream of appetizers going through the night and an even steadier stream of cava cocktails flowing, and we watched two very gay movies: Itty Bitty Titty Committee, which was really cute and funny and of course I ? the soundtrack, and Shine Louise Houson at Pink & White Production’s lesbian porn Superfreak, which was not as great a success as the former. I’ll save the reviews for Sugar Walls over at BCP, but I will say I just can’t get it up when I’m watching a porn starring past acquaintances! Perhaps I am too formal, but there you have it.

Speaking of formal, I made an amazing dinner tonight! I’m quite pleased with myself. It took FOREVER. It was just a classic baked chicken recipe that I kicked up a notch with paprika and onions, and it came out perfectly juicy, with just crispy enough, golden brown skin. We seasoned baby Yukon gold potatoes with garlic-infused olive oil, sea salt and pepper to throw in the oven, and I used the drippings from the chicken to make a Chilean white wine gravy reduction. M never eats any sort of gravy and she loved the one I made tonight. My resolutions are writing themselves, it seems.

XOXO,