Hue Gardens: Upside Down Ground

Skirt: Dolls Kill; Shoes: Shoe Carnival; Bag: Glamour Damaged, Etsy; LEGO bracelet: Michelle's Charm World, Etsy; Cupcake ring: A Self Portrait, Etsy; Neon watch: Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Heart bangle: B Fabulous; Pink watch: Rumours, JCPenney; Braided bracelet: Amrita Singh, Zulily; Green ring: Making Waves, Ocean City; Sunglasses: Brigantine beach shop: Yellow bangle: Mixit, JCPenney; Pink bangle: Target; Bird barrette: INC, Macy's

 

Bejeweled Bow Barrette

New York & Company

Skirt: Tinseltown, Macy's; Shoes: Nine West, Kohl's; Bag: Kohl's; Scrunchies: Lady Arya, Zulily; Green bangle: B Fabulous; Green spiked and pink bracelets: Amrita Singh, Zulily; Blue bracelet: Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Sunglasses: Michaels

Skirt: Tinseltown, Macy's

Peace of Art Necklace

Top: Almost Famous, Macy's

Shoes: Mix No. 6, DSW; Bag: Francesca's; Headband: So, Kohl's; Ring: Claire's; Blue bangle: So, Kohl's; Mint bracelet: H&M; Sunglasses: Michaels

Pop Princess Necklace

Top: New York & Company

On The King of Queens (because I'm the duchess of dated pop culture), Doug's dream delivery route was the one that went to Kew Gardens.  He wanted it because the packages were light enough for him to toss on the lawns, and the streets were lined with beautiful trees.  And that stuck with me because it sounded so nice.  After all, who wouldn't want an easier day plus time to stop and smell the roses (or, in this case, trees)?  That's what I was thinking as I curated these pink and green outfits.  Because they're like flowers, only upside down, the petal pink on the bottom and the leafy green (okay, aquatic blue-green, but I'm willing to stretch it if you will) on top.

That said, none of the new accessories I made are floral-themed.  Instead, I have an embellished bow, a peace sign, and some ice pops.  Not that the Peace of Art Necklace is all that new.  You may recognize it as the Piece Offering Necklace I put together at the start of the pandemic but didn't list.  While rounding out this ensemble trio, I decided to give it another look.  I ended up adding extra links to make the charms dangle lower, as well as an all-important extender chain.  Even the picture turned out better than last time.  So, satisfied, I added it to my Etsy shop.  

What a difference two years make.

I guess you just have to give peace -- and your delivery dreams -- a chance.

Happy Valentine's Day: Leopard Loves Lamp . . .

Black Cherry Bow Necklace 

Rockin' Ruby Barrette 

Rockin' Ruby Bracelet

Sweater: Poof, Marshalls

Skirt: Ellen Tracy, J. C. Penney's

Shoes: Payless

Bag: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Coat: Wild Fable, Target

. . . and Lamp loves Brick.  Or, rather, Brick (Steve Carell) loves Lamp, according to Anchorman.  At least until Anchorman 2 when he loves Chani (Kristin Wiig), who is only marginally brighter than a lamp.  But then, this is just the sort of obscure pop culture romance reference that's on the docket for this post.  Because this Valentine's Day, it's all about unlikely and/or unpopular couples.  Think of it as a kind of Mystery Date meets "Mystery Science Theater 3000" -- from an overthinker who watches too much TV. 

"Dawson's Creek": Joey & Pacey

The punchline here is that it's Pacey, not Dawson, who ends up with Joey.  And lots of people didn't like that, myself included.  I could still hear my sister protesting, "It's not called Pacey's Creek!" after watching that fateful series finale.  Yet years later, when we both watched the reruns, we changed our tune.  Who's there for Joey when that surfer dude tries to take her home from that drunken beach bash?  That's right; it's Pacey.  And who encourages her to go to Paris instead of cock blocking her big moment?  Correctamundo, Pacey again.  Which begs the question: Dawson who?  Turns out he's just some namby pamby Spielberg wannabe whose only claim to fame is that ugly cry.  

"The Office": Kelly & Ryan (not Ripa and Seacrest)

Oh, sure.  Everyone hearts the all-American, will-they-won't-they power ballad that is Jim and Pam.  No one wants to admit to the dysfunctional appeal of the Dumpster fire that is Kelly and Ryan.  Yet in the staid and often vanilla setting of Scranton, it's these two who bring the soap opera.  Kelly fakes a pregnancy and dumps Darryl via text.  Ryan propositions Erin and dumps Kelly so he can go to Thailand.  Then, in the very last episode, Kelly abandons her doctor husband, Ryan abandons his infant son, and they ride off into the sunset together.  But what else would we expect from a girl who stole a boat from her high school boyfriend and a guy who nearly burned down Dunder Mifflin nuking a Hot Pocket?

"The King of Queens": Spence & That Ice Cream Cone

Remember when Doug and Carrie and the gang went to that amusement park and Spence hit it off with that woman/man (it was never clear which) in a strawberry ice cream cone costume?  How he was pouring his heart out to it and saying that it was such a good listener?  Only to leave and come back to find an equally larger-than-life chocolate ice cream cone in its place?  Well, I always wondered what could have been for Spence and Old Creamy.  Because Spence is a sad sack.  In the whole series, his only relationships of note are with 1) a bowling alley waitress played by Rachel Dratch, 2) a culinary student who is too hot (a cook) for Carrie to handle, and 3) his roommate Danny.  The guy deserved a win.  Or at the very least, a lifetime supply of Ben and Jerry's.

So.  Whether you're lucky in love, loony in love, or even a loser in love, may TV always be your guide.  And valentine.  Unless you have an actual valentine.  In which case you can down a pound of Russell Stover's as you watch tube together.  

Reruns and refined sugar.  Nothing quite rocks romance better.

Movie Moment: Young Adult

January is not a time for happy movies.  When the bf and I hit the theater to see Young Adult last Friday night, it was thronged with people who had turned out for the horror flick The Devil Inside (not to be confused with the upbeat INXS hit of the same name).  

But I'm not here to talk about that movie (thankfully). 

Young Adult is the story of 37-year-old failed young adult fiction ghostwriter and recent divorcee Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron).  Suffering from (the beginnings of?) alcoholism and depression, Mavis takes one last greedy grab at happiness by returning to her one-horse Minnesota hometown to stalk her high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), who is now married with a baby.  So things are pretty bleak, right down to Mavis's seedy Minneapolis apartment, nearly empty closet, and take-no-prisoners bitchiness.  Mavis is the kind of woman who wears sweats to Macy's and no-holds-barred-cleavage-baring dresses to brightly lit sports bars.  She also has the nasty habit of pulling out her hair, a problem she masks by wearing hair extensions.

Mavis is in a bar plotting her next move with Buddy when she runs into ex-classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt).  (I'd like to interject that I've always found Oswalt's "King of Queens" character Spence to be sensitive and endearing and thought that Doug and Co. were far too hard on him.  Now back to the discussion at hand.)  Mavis, having been of the in crowd elite, doesn't immediately recognize him but ends up exclaiming (something along the lines of), "Hey, you're that hate crime guy!", her eyes traveling to the cane propped next to his barstool.  Matt then relays how he was beaten and left for dead by the football team (I think) because they thought he was gay, the effects of which permanently damaged his nether regions.  Thawed by this icebreaker, Mavis reveals her plans to win Buddy back, much to Matt's disgust. 

As one may predict, it's a disgust that's well-founded.  Although receptive to meeting Mavis, Buddy is clearly discomfited by her return.  Even Mavis's parents don't know what to say when she retreats to her childhood bedroom and dons Buddy's old sweatshirt.  (By the way, what's with these movies where parents leave their grown kids' bedrooms creepily untouched?  I don't know about you, but my old room has long since been stripped of its unicorn figurines.)  Yet as Mavis grows more and more distant from the people who, as she puts it, "knew her at her best," she and Matt nurse a tenuous friendship.

A few words about Buddy.  He's obviously meant to be a good guy and comes out looking even better than I suspect he should when stacked against Mavis's machinations.  But he does a few things that he shouldn't, revealing Mavis to be vulnerable and, dare I say, sympathetic.  She's a modern-day Blanche Dubois, delusional and damaged, gorgeous and glamorous, and desperately trying to hang on to a time that has moved on without her.  She's not the cheerleader who married her high school sweetheart and got all fat and happy.  But she's not the big-city success story, either.  She's a ghostwriter for a teen series that's outgrown itself, a byline-less novelist living through her characters in hopes of achieving greatness.

As I hinted at this post's beginning, Young Adult isn't a feel good movie.  (Cue the ladies a few rows ahead of us who screeched, "That's it?!" as the credits rolled.)  But it's a good movie and one worth seeing.  Theron and Oswalt shine as outcasts from opposite sides of the social spectrum, and the nebulous ending makes a kind of sad perfect sense.