The Drawbacks of Tiebacks: (Not So) Fast Food and Matters of Art

Yellow Rainbow Glow Necklace 

Yellow Rainbow Glow Earrings

Yellow Rainbow Glow Purse Charm

Top: Candie's, Kohl's

Shorts: Merona, Target

Shoes: Betseyville, Macy's

Bag: Marshalls, embellished by The Tote Trove

Belt: Izod, Marshalls

Bow: The Tote Trove

Non-tassel purse charm: The Tote Trove

Ah, tassels.  First made popular, not by hippies, but by Scarlett O'Hara when she, in the ultimate necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention moment, tore down those curtains to make that green dress.  Fortunately, I didn't need to venture any further than the nearest craft store to get the ingredients for my latest passel of tassels and pompoms (a phrase, by the way, that I say far too much on this blog).  Not that my shopping trip wasn't without its own challenges.  Oh, big-box-craft-store-that-shall-remain-nameless, you tried to deny me my discount.  But I wouldn't let a little thing like a barcode-less coupon stop me.  Anyway, in a nod to Gone with the Wind's groundbreaking green dress, I paired my Yellow Rainbow Glow trio (that's what I named my passel; nice, no?) with an emerald ensemble.

Speaking of which, it's funny that a character named Scarlett is best known for wearing green, first for the aforementioned drape dress, second for the green-print white one at the Twelve Oaks picnic.  (Yes, there's the red dress too.  The one that gets her into all the trouble.  Still, it's a sad second fiddle-dee-dee to its less va-va-voom verdant sisters.)   Then again, maybe this color conundrum makes sense.  Because Scarlett is a woman of contradictions.  For instance, she stuffs her face before said picnic in the privacy of her own home (okay, plantation) so that no one will think her unladylike for stuffing her face in front of others.  She doesn't want to do this and in fact fights it, but it's an unwritten rule of the antebellum South, and, like the South itself, she surrenders.  Yet Rhett, if given the opportunity, would have seen past such subterfuge.  I think that if he'd said, right from the get-go, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a ham (about your weird secret eating), then a lot of heartache -- and perhaps heartburn -- could have been avoided.

The same could be said for Mr. Darcy and Bridget Jones and lots of other iconic couples.  Which just goes to show that being a woman who likes food and falling in love (so a woman who, in other words, breathes), living in any time or place is in a real sisterhood of the traveling pantaloons situation.

Kind of makes you rethink sloppy seconds.

Book Report (And a Trip to the Library!): Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

The Saturday before last I finally bit the bullet and visited the library here in Brigantine.  I'm fairly certain that I've blogged about not liking libraries before, particularly their musty smell and mystery-stained books.  But a desire to get to know my adopted town better, and yes, thriftiness (those paperback purchases add up!), finally conspired to open my mind.

Turns out I picked a good day.  No sooner had I settled into one of these groovy lime and cobalt blue couches than did I hear a chorus of dog barks and English accents filling the lobby behind me.  From what I gathered, the library was hosting a bring-your-dog party to honor Queen Elizabeth II's 86th birthday.  It seemed very quaint, the kind of thing you would - and this is just too perfect - read about in a book!  For my part, I was reading my own edition of The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square but went home with a careworn copy of Bridget Jones's Diary (in honor of Britain and all).  Somehow, I'd never read it, although I'd of course seen the movie.  Checking it out was another amusing episode, as I hadn't used my county library card since I was a minor!  The librarian looked at me curiously (I was decked out in a weekend's worth of Tote Trove finery), finally asking how old I was now.  In the end she issued me a shiny new card.  All in a day's adventuring :)

So, Bridget Jones's Diary.  At first it took some getting used to, what with its somewhat choppy diarist's tone.  But before long I became so immersed in Bridget's daily indignities that they began to seem like my own, especially as a fellow thirtysomething.  Which made me think how crazy it would be if Bridget had blogged about her romantic, professional, and family traumas, not to mention her daily weight, cigarette, drink, calorie, and lottery ticket tallies, instead of tucking them away in her notebook.  Having kept a journal for years, I couldn't help but wonder if anyone does that anymore.

Anyway, I found the plot of Bridget Jones's Diary to be more involved and a little darker than the one in the movie.  For example, there's this whole over-the-top sequence in which Bridget's mom (or rather, mum) leaves her dad for a smooth-talking swindler and a glitzy TV career, creating a compelling (not to mention hilarious) parallel between she and Bridget as independent women in different phases of their lives.  Bridget's a "career girl" (whatever that means) who kind of wants to settle down, whereas her mom, who's devoted her whole life to her family, feels like she needs to grab at life's last gasp of adventure.  I can't imagine why all of this didn't make it onto the silver screen, except that maybe it would've overshadowed the whole Daniel vs. Mark Darcy romantic tug-of-war and/or made the movie too long. 

I think it's safe to say that this library lark will hover around for awhile.  I can't wait to see what I find next time.