shopping – Don't Gel Too Soon

The Engineer at Anthropologie Who Taught Me Plenty

This is Julia. She’s a stylist at Anthropologie, the wonderful, whimsical store frequented mostly by younger women, although lucky are the older among us who show up for bargains and get so much more.

I was there today, my husband safely on the boyfriend couch as I poked around, found a ton of stuff and made my way to the fitting room. Among the crowd and line of shoppers waiting their turn was this woman, headset on, jaunty scarf around her neck. I must have looked as overwhelmed by my choices as I felt because she just plain took charge. Showed me why my sleeves couldn’t be full length, which things should be tucked in and which should be left out. My favorite lesson: “Don’t hide your hips. They’re good.” Miraculous advice for someone who, for at least a decade, wore size 14 jeans. (Not anymore….) I so wish I’d met her years ago; she taught me how to make simple choices that looked great in ways I would loved to have mastered long ago.

Julia herself was fabulous. Her mother was stylist for Lucille Ball, beloved star of the long-running 50’s sitcom I Love Lucy. Avoiding her shadow, Julia became an engineer, rising high in the executive suites of Hughes Electronics. When she retired, she surrendered to the natural gifts and love of style that she had indeed inherited from her mom and went to work as a stylist herself. “I’m having a blast.” she told me.

This, one of my last NABLOPOMO posts, is a thank you note to her for the fun I had and the things I learned through her generous guidance. I have some great new stuff, too.

WHAT $600 WILL BUY IN MANHATTAN –OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND [STILL] LOVE NEW YORK

This is our room at the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue across the street from the Waldorf. It’s a trendy place with dark hallways (trendy), leaning mirrors at the elevators (trendy), a lobby all silver and white and wood, including a huge bowl of silver Christmas Tree balls and another of silver Hershey’s Kisses. Our room is literally no bigger than this. And the bathroom… well, look.

This is it. All of it. We lived in Manhattan for 20 years so I know from New York prices and this post isn’t really about the $600 (!!!!) room. It’s just that this is ALL you get for $600. This event is across the street and our hosts put us here. I’m not ungrateful; in fact, it was lovely of them to place us right there. I’m just stunned, even after all my years both of New York living and heavy-duty traveling that this is what things cost. Plain, old, mediocre to not-so-great things like this room.

THIS is what I bought in ONE DAY of getting ready for the dinner I went to tonight. Enough makeup and hair products and hair styling/cutting/coloring to (almost) pay for this room. It will last a very long time but I’m crazed with guilt. Oh well. I’m trying not to surrender to all the "I don’t need that" stuff when it’s things I want and actually might need (at least a little bit) and doesn’t cost as much as a laptop or a car.

This is where we were – a benefit dinner. This is Cheap Trick performing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Everyone dancing in the aisles and me vacillating between loving it and feeling weird at people channeling Beatles wonders, but not the Beatles. Should they? Was it irreverant to the point of sin? I don’t know, but it sure was fun.

There’s lots more and I should tell you about it but I’m tired and we have to get up early to get the train home. I will say that seeing 50 or so cancer survivors up on the stage singing "Good Day Sunshine" was pretty moving. Goodnight for now.

ODE TO COSTCO AND ITS FANS

Costco seems to be everyone’s darling. Of course, it’s been my darling for years. It’s got great stuff, great prices, great staff, even wonderful employee policies. But in the past week I’ve read two very loving profiles of the biggest of the big box stores in publications ranging from State of Grace — the blog of the remarkable Grace Davis, to the Sunday New York Times.

There are lots of reasons for this I think. Of course there are the usual ones: excellent quality, bulk discounts on staples like paper towels, excellent store brand tee shirts (say some of the men in my life), remarkable produce, and pretty good everything else.

It’s also fun. At the ones around Washington DC, and the ones we used to go to in LA, I always feel like I’m at the UN. Once, during the women’s World Cup, we walked in to find, gathered around the television section, an enthusiastic crowd that looked as if they were from every country in the world. Mexico, the Philippines, India, Japan — just everywhere – all cheering together. It’s always like that. Big families, couples, singles, mom and pop restaurateurs, hipsters, geeks — everyone. Even Douglas Coupland. In my favorite of his books, Microserfs, he writes "my universe consists of home, Microsoft, and Costco."

It’s also home to one of my favorite Simpsons scenes ever: the family almost drowned when they ran into and broke all the giant bottles of cranberry juice in an aisle display and an ocean of juice flooded the store.

OH and I forgot books. Best sellers, cook books, thrillers – if they’ve got something you want, they’ve got it for less than anywhere else.

So carry on oh noble vendor — serving us well and offering us entertaining distractions (if you can park) on Sunday afternoons. We knew you even before the New York Times. But before that? What did we ever do without you?