Today is Bucket’s birthday. She is seven years old.
Normally she is an equinox baby, but this year the equinox was yesterday. Maybe that’s why she was so cranky about letting me take birthday photos.
I tried. I did. She would not look at the camera no matter how I pleaded and waved things. I think she was shunning me because I brushed her first.
Ah well. She is not as much of a camera lover as her sister, but she’s still a pretty princess.
Happy Birthday, fluffiest of Fluffy Buckets!
Things I accomplished in my week of little-to-no internets, an unnumbered list.
In other news, it’s disturbingly spring-like here. We had the windows open yesterday. It kind of freaked me out.
Tessa is enjoying the sunshine.
I spent a large portion of the afternoon mesmerized by the shininess of the Apple iPad. Even though it has a horrible, horrible name. For about an hour I seriously considered getting one, since we were planning on replacing our MacBook later this year anyway and we don’t use it for that much. And it seemed like it would be a good happy medium between my iPhone lust and my AT&T loathing.
And then I realized since it’s app-based I can’t really do anything useful on it and would be deprived of my beloved Scrivener. So I am going to have to ignore the shiny for now. Someone call me when it runs OS X.
In better news, I tested USPS requested package pickup today and it seems to have worked just fine, so I now have an alternative to walking to the post office in the snow when I have something larger than print envelope sized to mail.
And we are rolling toward the end of our epic LOST re-watch. Season 5 is a lot more, um, inconsistent than I’d remembered. Still good, just missing something. But I know the finale will make me cry again, so maybe I’ll forgive the inconsistencies in a few days.
Still in revisionland, of course. I’m not sure I’m going to have a finished(ish) draft by as early in February as I’d wanted, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again, which is something. It still needs massive amounts of work but the structure is getting there and that’s making my brain hurt marginally less.
Bucket, as always, remains unimpressed.
I’ve been trying all week to come up with something to blog about, to no avail. I’m not doing anything other than writing and making tea and while my tea is lovely and the writing is going better than I had expected it to, it’s not really anything blog-worthy. Tessa napped in the shape of a comma the other day, but of course she moved before I could get the camera so I couldn’t blog about that, either.
So yesterday I tweeted that I should just blog about my shoes, especially since I have new ones, and people (well, Liz & Rachel, who as far as I know do count as people) seemed to think that was a good idea.
So this post is all about my shoes. Specifically, all about my Fluevogs. If you have no interest in shoes or photos of shoes, I suggest you stop reading now. Though there is a kitten included in the photos, because I live with needy kittens.
Only the shoe people left and maybe some kitten fans? Good.
I have a confession to make, first, though.
I am not a shoe person.
I have never been a shoe person. I am thinking about the history of my life in shoes and can come up with nothing more than a few pairs of well-worn Doc Martens and a vague recollection that I had to wear brown shoes with my high school uniform, and I cannot recall what a single pair of those brown shoes looked like. I have never particularly cared much about my footwear.
And then a few years ago I started developing a fondness for shoes. Particularly boots, but shoes in general. I have big feet, so I never particularly cared for shoe shopping, and I can’t walk in thin or high heels so that always eliminated most of my choices. But probably due to the wonder of the internet I’ve been able to find more shoes that fit my style and my feet.
Today I will be featuring my Fluevogs, since I just got a new pair yesterday.
I discovered Fluevogs several years ago, likely via the BPAL forum, and figured I would pretty much never be able to afford them. I got one pair on clearance that the boy later inherited because they looked better on him. (No photo, they’re Angel Michaels. Just pretend the red bit is white.)
But now between gifts and savvy sale shopping I have three pairs and the boy has two.
These are the Fellowship Kathy Mary Janes that arrived yesterday. Tessa had to be in the photo because she’s a camerawhore.
They’re adorable and don’t seem to need much breaking in other than a teensy bit in the toes. I wanted a shoe that could be dressed up or down that didn’t have much of a heel and these seem like they’ll be perfect. No, I did not pay $239 for them. Google is my friend.
I love the Fellowship family, because of the heels. They’re big & low but but nicely streamlined, and the shoes are so fitted that they don’t look clunky.
These are my other Fellowships, the Jenna boots:
Please excuse my rolled up jeans. I learned today that it is very difficult to take photos of your own shoes. This one was actually accomplished by aiming my camera down into my full length mirror. I flipped it in PhotoShop because the backwards “f” on the heel (that you can’t even see) was making me neurotic.
I love these boots. They are comfy and fabulous. I’d thought the buckles would annoy me but they don’t, and even if they did they’re removable.
And last but certainly not least are my beloved Bellevue Libby Smiths:
Y’all should know by now that I’m a sucker for Victoriana, and one of my very favorite color schemes is black & white with a touch of red, so the buttons killed me and I kind of had to have these the second I saw them. I left them on after I took these photos, because I don’t have enough opportunities to wear them.
The whole Bellevue family is gorgeous, too, and the heel is actually sturdy enough for me to manage, which is brilliant because if these boots hadn’t worked on me I seriously would have cried.
And Fluevog is tormenting me now, because they tweeted a sneaky preview of these forthcoming Bellevues:
I’m kind of going to have to get those, too. I should start saving my pennies now.
This is not all of it, of course. This is mostly the recently acquired stuff. I should really re-organize all the shelves so I can actually see how huge the to-read pile is, but that might get scary.
We don’t really have that much snow, but it’s pretty. That nice fluffy white snow that we didn’t get much of last year. I much prefer this to the ice & slush. Though it has made me realize that I need proper boots for snow, not sure what happened to my old ones.
I spent most of the weekend (waiting for the snow and getting snowed on) reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl on recommendation from my friend Liz. Remind me in the future to always take book recs from Liz, because she predicted quite accurately that I would dig this book, and I really did. It’s a book to fall into and not come up for air for awhile and it’s gorgeous. Moody and magical. Just in time to end up on my best of the year list, which I should probably write up sometime in the next few days before the year slips away.
Yesterday for Yule I made eggnog ice cream with an ice cream maker that has been in storage since 2001. It worked surprisingly well, considering, and eggnog ice cream is officially the easiest ice cream ever to make. Quart eggnog. 1/2 cup sugar. Splash of vanilla. Mix & dump in ice cream maker. Ignore for awhile. Come back and scoop out ice cream. Serve with gingersnaps. It’s kind of awesome.
So for the rest of the week I have paintings to paint and revisions to work on and presents to wrap. But I have eggnog ice cream and snow and new incense to burn and beautiful new copper jewelry to wear. Feeling all wintery and hibernating.